


Topaz

by bardsmaid



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mytharc, Work In Progress, season 6
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-14 10:58:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 52,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bardsmaid/pseuds/bardsmaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to bardsmaid's Sanctuary series. Begins right where Sanctuary left off. Alex Krycek has fled west from Owensburg, weak and re-injured. Mulder and Scully are left wondering which group is behind the disturbing symptoms Tracy developed, but critical evidence has mysteriously disappeared. The strange man Mulder noticed in the hospital hallway seems more mysterious--and potentially involved--once surveillance tapes are studied. And Teena Mulder is warned about the dangers of her son returning to the FBI.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The X-Files characters are the creations of Chris Carter and 1013 Productions; no infringement is intended.

**Opening scene: Half-Life**

_Two hours west of Owensburg, Alex Krycek wakes up at an IHOP._

  
You jolt awake when the white-haired woman calls you, and suddenly your mind's scrambling to figure out where the hell you are. Car, passenger seat. Night. You blink, hoping to buy a little more clarity. Your knee aches. Slowly you ease it down from where it's been jammed against the dashboard. A glance around reveals a parking lot, the bluish glare of overhead lights, scattered cars.

Then memory hits you like a sucker punch, the last eighteen hours pouring in: the fire alarm that offered you a chance to run; waiting it out on the outskirts of Owensburg; the hospital room. The way her head fell back when they finally took her from you. Something cold and sick pools in your stomach and you lean forward, head in your one sorry hand.

"Don't let us bother you none," the woman says, her voice soft, calming.

You make yourself look up. The dull light sends shadows deep into the wrinkles on her face.

"I just wanted you to know where we'll be." She points through the windshield to the right. You follow her finger and notice a neon IHOP sign beyond the second row of cars. It may as well exist in some other universe.

No, that would be you.

"You're welcome to come, you know--if you want."

On the dashboard, green clock hands point to just past four. You shake your head. You'll be lucky if you can even stand right now.

The woman and her grandson, though, they've crossed three states with only a bag of peanut butter sandwiches to keep them going, and she's been promising Bobby they'd stop for pancakes. You watch them make their way across the darkened parking lot, the old woman with ten-year-old Bobby in tow, the boy walking stiff-legged, still half asleep. Twice he turns to peer back at you with an owl's look, wondering who the hell this stranger is that Grandma picked up while he was sacked out in the back seat, dreaming his way across Kentucky.

You shift, then stretch your legs and feel carefully at the bandages covering the wound on your side--fresh wound, right side. Your head falls back against the seat. Your fingers are shaking and you tell yourself it's the stress: two wounds, too many hours without rest, not enough food. The adrenaline drain of hiding for hours, then working your way out of yet another town under the noses of yet another set of faceless cops. You're supposed to be able to convince yourself. You used to be able to do that.

Outside the window, thin clouds drift slowly across a slice of moon. If you close your eyes, you might catch the end of that dream you were snatched out of--see her again, alive as anything...

You know you can't afford it.

And there it is, the knife-to-the-gut you should have known would come: that past-tense she's not your friend, or your helper, or your lover, but just another red flag, the crumbling edge of a precipice that could take you down with it if you get too close. You know how to back off--god, you're so practiced it's pathetic. But there's this other thing inside you, too, raw and primal like a wolf's howl, and all it wants is to make it to the edge of that cliff and jump. Pretty soon your eyes go closed and the images from this morning start to creep in, offering a glimpse of her. You try to pick your angles, avoid the bad parts, but...

Your eyes come open. You swallow, stare at the glove compartment.

You'd better go inside.

When you open the car door, the air's stagnant and the sweat on the back of your shirt, when you stand, quickly turns clammy. You put one foot in front of the other, mechanical, but halfway to the restaurant you remember you haven't locked the car, so you turn back, thread you way through the handful of vehicles and hit the lock button. Everything's gray, like a dream, except for the throbbing of something that's been ripped away--something you can't touch. Something you'll never touch again.

So maybe this is what Mulder feels. Maybe Samantha being snatched away has stayed raw inside him all this time and he can't help following the trail. It's his way of pushing back against the pain, the way you screamed when they hacked your arm off. Funny you should finally get it.

For a moment you almost feel her--a breath beside your ear, her hand on your arm--and your breath hitches. You look up at the stars, desperate for some kind of sign--any sign--but the darkness stares back like a blind man. Finally you look down, put one foot forward, start moving.

Inside, the restaurant's too cold. The lights make you squint, your stomach's queasy and the last thing you want is food, but you spot the woman and kid and make your way to their booth. The woman looks up and smiles. She figured you might end up hungry. Even if it is 4:30 in the morning, it's better to fill up while you have the chance. You glance at the menu; it's about a million miles from anything you care about but you manage to give the waitress an order. There's this little skirmish running inside your head, one part of you wanting to reach back a week, to touch the residue of her before she completely disappears, while another part, distant and cynical as hell, shakes its head at what a soft fuck you've become.  _You knew her for all of three weeks, Aleksei_ , it taunts.  _Three weeks is nothing._

"Your breakfast," the old woman says, and you refocus to see Bobby eyeing you again. You look down at the plate--scrambled eggs beside a little pool of catsup you can't remember pouring--and reach for your fork.

The taste is too strong. All around you the magnified clank of dishes makes you want to flinch. You keep your head down and make yourself chew what's in your mouth, then take another bite, and another. Body needs fuel to keep going, and you will. Somehow. In spite of everything, you always do. Maybe you're as stupid as Mulder. Maybe the universe is laughing.

Well, fuck the universe.

Bobby scratches the side of his nose and then trails a spoon through what's left on his plate, picking up bits of hash browns. He's got freckles and his skin is smooth--hasn't been roughed up by life. Looks like grandma cuts his hair.

You settle back against the curve of the booth and start to eat again, but after a few bites the taste fades. At the counter a couple of truckers are talking, and another family's just straggled in from a car--five kids--and are settling themselves, passing out menus, guiding two sets of baby feet into the right places on high chairs. Was it just the pain of the wound these last three weeks? Is that why you didn't see where this thing with Tracy could lead? Or were you just doing what the old woman said, filling up while you had the chance? How often do you get a chance?

Not that it matters now.

Your mind starts to drift. The people and booths and carpets blend into a geometric blur and you blink once, then do it again. Things settle back to normal. But a moment later you set your fork down, reach into your pocket and find your fingers curling around a pistol. Which is crazy because you know damn well it's been two days since you've had access to a gun. Before you know what's happening, you're slipping out of the booth, standing. The gun comes out of your pocket. You clear your throat--no, more like somebody's doing it for you--and all of a sudden the feeling hits you, that everything's about to go to hell.

"This is a holdup!"

Shit.

A jolt of adrenaline and your heart pounds.

"A dollar from each of you," you go on, the words spilling out of your mouth now like water. "Every one. That includes the kids."

People stare. You sweep the room with the gun... or better put, the gun sweeps an arc, taking your arm with it. A waitress stumbles backward and lands in the lap of one of her customers and people suddenly switch gears, look down, start digging in their pockets.

All you want is to be the hell out of here--away from this restaurant, from this state, from a world where somebody comes into your life, finds a niche inside you and then gets torn away, leaving an ache that won't quit.

But evidently your body has other ideas. You pick a basket off the next table, dump out the muffins and start to circle the room, going from table to table, waiting for people to cough up their dollar bills as this surreal little dance unfolds.

"Please don't kill us," a stringy brown-haired woman whispers, all pleading and bloodhound eyes. "What do you want?"

You shut her up with a look--how the hell should you know what you want?--but the question seems to hang in the air now, echoed by a roomful of invisible voices. You move from one table to the next. Dollar bills drop or get pushed into your basket. Not a mouth opens, not a set of eyes drills you with a look that might set the madman off, but you can hear the question repeat, building like a drumbeat in your blood until you can barely breathe.

"Somebody to love." Shit. "Just--"

Not even Ilya Gurov, a Moscow thug with a nasty skill with a pair of pliers, could have gotten you to say that. Your words fall into a pin-drop silent room. You've flipped out for sure.

If they weren't staring before, they are now. You feel yourself redden and clear your throat. "You heard me." Your gun hand rises.

No way this can be real. You struggle to wake yourself from this private little insanity but your body continues to work its way around the room, outstretched basket in one hand, gun in the other. You stop beside the high chair of the family that's just arrived. The kid has a headful of brown curls. You swallow and go cold. If there's a hell, you've reached it now for sure.

"I'll go."

You look up. No one in the room moves. Then a head starts to turn toward you in the far corner booth, pale blonde hair, smooth as water, and any defenses you have left just melt away. You see her in the yellow dress, and then you're upstairs at her place, twenty miles from anywhere, rain splatting in slow, fat drops outside the window, nothing between the two of you but the sweat that holds your bodies together. You let your lips drift past her ear and into that pale, soft hair. She burrows against your shoulder and you lie there in the padded silence, wrapped around each other, rising and falling on each other's breathing. For a few hours the two of you had been a whole little universe, hidden miles from anywhere and anyone. The temptation to stay there had been unbelievable.

When she starts to stir there's a hand against your shoulder, jostling you. Then a pause and the shaking comes again.

"Jeff--"

Your eyes fly open to the bright glare of the restaurant and the half-eaten plate of eggs in front of you. Pain filters back into your side where Silver's bullet clipped you.

"We're about ready to go," the white-haired woman says. "I'm going to take Bobby for a pit stop first. Meet you at the car?"

It takes everything you've got just to nod. When you can stand again, you get up and make your way outside. Away from the bright lights that ring the restaurant, stars wink dully in the murkiness overhead. They're every bit as far away as she is, and looking at them, the empty place inside you begins to beat with a heart of its own. For some reason you picture her in the laundry room barefoot, wearing your thermal shirt. God knows why she put out for you the way she did, why she stuck with you when she realized the danger. The old man would've found somebody else to tend to you while the wound healed. She had to know that.

You look down, swallow and start for the car.

 _She promised you_.

Your hand balls into a fist and when you notice, you stare down at it, willing it to go slack. Not her fault. Anyway, it wasn't a pledge you could expect to hold another human being to--not within the framework of time and space and matter. It was an expression--solidarity, a heart-to-heart thing. The memory floods in: the conviction in her voice, the way it lit her face. For a moment, it's almost as if she's there.

A car door slams and darkness fills in around you. You shiver in the sudden cold.

If she could be here, she would. It's barbed, hollow comfort but you hug it to you anyway.

Around you, in the still-life of the parking lot, overhead standards spill dull pools of light on the asphalt. You put that first foot forward, heading for the car. 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Wednesday, May 26, 1999**

Greenwich, Connecticut  
7:54 a.m.

  
The bulky man on her doorstep was familiar, though she hadn't seen him in decades. He'd put on weight in the intervening years.

"I have information for you," he said, his voice still as dry and monotone as ever.

"I'm not interested." Teena Mulder's grip on the half-open door tightened. "Whatever you have to say, just say it."

"We've received information that your son discovered someone doing new vaccine research"--he paused--"against a grave, international threat."

"Fox doesn't discuss his work with me.  I'm sure anything he's found will be in a report." She glared at him. "One you no doubt have access to."

He seemed unfazed by her accusation. "Our sources also tell us that Alex Krycek may be looking for this researcher."

Teena swallowed.

"Tell him that if he approaches her, we will do to him as he did to Spender."

The man turned, went down the steps, coat flapping behind him, and disappeared into a waiting limousine.  Teena closed the door quickly, locked it and peered out through the peep hole until the black car had disappeared from view. 

A buzzing rose inside her, a knot forming in her stomach. She should contact Alex, to warn him, but she hadn't even had time to purchase a new laptop since giving him hers two days earlier. 

Fox. She should definitely call Fox.

Or was contacting them exactly what the man had wanted?  Was her home bugged? Her phone line tapped?

She drifted to the window.  Long-stemmed white daisies waved gently in the breeze in the bed below the sill.  Overhead, a white cloud was thinning in the perfectly blue sky, wisps of it tearing away from the greater mass and dissolving.

Teena's fingers trembled against the glass. How deceptively beautiful the day was.

She gripped the edge of the window sill.

Even after Leland's death and finding Alex, it wasn't over.  It would never be over. 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 **Interstate 70**  
Eastern Missouri  
8:12 a.m.

Pain in his neck, and a steady low vibration of his head against...

Something. 

Glass. 

He worked to clear his head.

Car window. 

Alex Krycek stirred.  Country music played low over the hum of road noise.  He was warm, probably sun coming through the windshield. 

"Five," a young voice came from behind him.  "Six...  Seven."

"Eight, over there."  This voice--a woman's voice--came from the driver's seat beside him.

Krycek swallowed, mouth dry.  An image of the hospital room filtered in, sitting on the bed and rocking Tracy against him even though he was pretty sure she was already...

He swallowed, forced his eyes open and squinted into the haze of morning.  Blinked, and then did it again. Flat land. Car dealerships and professional buildings, everything broadly spaced. Upscale area.

A heaviness began to seep over him, settling like an invisible sandbag against his chest.  His right side ached--the new wound.

"Morning, Jeff," the woman said, glancing over at him. The wrinkles in her face didn't seem as deep in the daylight, though her hair, pulled back and braided, looked the same as it had the night before, white streaked with gray.

"Where are we?" His voice was low, gravelly.

"Just leaving St. Louis."

"You missed the arch," Bobby chimed in from the back seat.

Krycek sat up straighter.  His head was thick and he had no interest in waking up to this reality, but she'd expect him to go forward, to do what he could about the threat.  He owed her that.

"Feeling any more rested now?"

And if the woman asked more questions, he'd need to get his mind to work well enough to string together a coherent narrative about himself and this trip he was taking. He'd pretty much gotten into her car outside Owensburg and fallen asleep, except for the forty-five minutes they'd spent having an early breakfast at the IHOP in Paducah. Which had been a little nightmare in itself--at least inside his own head.

He shrugged.  "Had some surgery a few weeks back.  I'm supposed to be taking it easy, but then this came up."  'This' being his brief "friend in trouble" explanation for needing a ride west.

"Then probably better you didn't have me drop you at the rail yard in Lexington like you planned. Would've been a lot rougher ride, especially given your condition. These old station wagons may be gas hogs, but the seats are mighty comfortable for long trips." She paused.  "Thanks for the gas money, by the way."

"No problem."

Outside the window the buildings were beginning to thin. 

"What's the next big place?" he asked.

"Kansas City."

"How long?"

"About four hours driving, but I'm going to have to stop and rest before then.  Been driving since ten last night."

"Smart move, stopping." He'd gone through this with Scully two days ago. At least, unlike Mulder, she'd had the sense to get off the road when she knew she'd reached her limit.

"I used to drive with a long-haul trucker," she said.  "Taught me where my limits are."

Mulder. Back at the Reston house he'd blurted out something about Vanek's work. Which meant the old men were likely to hear about it from Darryl Silver; they'd find him and grill him about every little detail of what happened there.  They'd want to know about anyone doing vaccine research, and take it for themselves.  Just as important, they'd want to make sure Mulder or anyone else who knew about it couldn't float that info anywhere the Colonists might pick up on it.

Which meant he needed to warn Mulder that they'd be watching him.  As for himself, most likely it wouldn't upset the suits from the board room too much that he'd taken out the old man. But with Vanek gone, they'd assume he'd gotten greedy and gone searching for her.  Which meant they'd be looking for him, too.

Krycek swallowed.  He reached around and touched the new wound gingerly.  Silver's bullet had clipped the side of his waist.  Fate or luck or whatever must have been with him, because the hit had been too low to splinter a rib, too high to hit vital organs. But it had gouged out a messy chunk of flesh and now it stung worse than it had yesterday. Definitely not a good sign.

Krycek squinted against the brightness coming in through the windshield, glanced around the car and focused on the plastic milk jug full of water next to his feet.  He reached for his pocket and worked out the prescription bottle.

"Mind if I have a little of this?"

"No, go ahead. That's what it's there for."

"Got some medication I need to take."

He set the jug between his legs, worked the cap off and set it on his knee.  Worked the cap off the prescription bottle with his teeth and shook out a pill onto the denim of his pants.  Putting the cap back was trickier; suddenly he could feel Bobby's proximity, looking over his shoulder to see how a one-armed man would manage to work a cap onto a bottle. 

He downed the pill and chased it with a couple of swallows from the jug, then capped it and set it back on the floor. Slouched down in the seat and closed his eyes, hoping to find a comfortable position.

No luck.

Tracy'd tell him to lie down. She'd tell him his body needed the rest.  Maybe even that the boy would appreciate the chance to sit in front for a while.  What kid refused the opportunity to ride shotgun?

His thumb worked its way into his pocket, feeling for the little card that had held the turquoise earring, but he came up empty.  He must have left it on the hospital bed. He thought back to two mornings ago in the Reston house, surreptitiously passing the earring on its little card to his mother, her passing it back to him later, a sign of solidarity, of two operatives joined in their determination to resist the common enemy.  He could feel her hand against the side of his neck, there at the end, as he sat on the tailgate of the minivan, trying to hold himself together, waiting for Scully to drive him to Owensburg.

Krycek swallowed against a growing pressure in his chest and opened his eyes.  "Any chance I could swap with Bobby there for a while?"  He pointed to the back seat.

"Yeah, I want to sit up front, Nana. Can I?"

A mile or so down the road they pulled off onto the shoulder.  Krycek got out, waited for Bobby to get into the front and shut the thick door behind him.  Then he settled himself into the back seat, moved a bag and a box onto the floor and lay down across the expanse of red vinyl. He closed his eyes. The heavy car lumbered back onto the highway and gradually built up speed. He let the rhythm of it start to carry him from consciousness.  He was alone this time, no fingers between his, no strong thin, arm above those fingers. No personal cheering section. No soft, smooth body lying spooned behind him in the sunlight, keeping the world at bay.

His hand wanted to curl, but there would be no response this time, just an emptiness he wasn't ready to face. Stretching his fingers out, he rested them against the leg of his jeans. 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 **Mulder's rented room**  
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.  
10:37 a.m.

Scully stirred and opened her eyes. Mulder lay between her and her view of the clock on the small table beside the bed.  He turned toward her when she pushed up.

"You're awake," she said, settling back against his shoulder.  "What time is it?"

"Just past 10:30." He ruffled her hair with a warm hand. "Feeling delinquent for not getting up earlier?"

"No, actually." She paused and frowned. "I think it's going to take me a while to transition from everything that's happened lately."  She looked up at the ridges in the pale green ceiling overhead. "Have you been awake long, Mulder?"

"Maybe half an hour." A somberness seeped in and filled the room. After a moment he let out a sigh. "Maybe coffee would help."

Scully moved out of his way. Mulder sat up and put his feet on the floor. He looked up and closed his eyes.  "Twilight zone," he said.  He turned to glance at her. "And I used to think our regular routine was 'out there'."

"I know."

"Did you sleep okay?"

She half-smiled. "When I slept, yes."

"Small bed didn't bother you?"

"Not at all." After a beat, her smile broadened. "I've been thinking about this room, about coming back here with you."

On the desk, a phone rang.

"Mine or yours?" he asked.

She stretched toward the desk. "Yours."

He went around the bed to retrieve it and switched it on. "Mulder."

Scully lay back against the pillow and studied the light filtering through the small panes of glass in the door.

"No, Mom... No, just... Just stay where you are. For now, anyway.  If you go anywhere, they're likely to follow you." A pause. "I'll get my friends to connect with you about the computer. I'll call them now. Yeah... I will, Mom... You, too."

Mulder turned the phone off and frowned.

"What did she say?"

"You know how Skinner and I were debating the pros and cons of a normal reinstatement?  Well, it looks like our decision's been made for us. Mom was visited several hours ago by a man from Smoky's old group.  Evidently they're not happy about us coming across Vanek's work."

"Why?"

"I don't know.  Maybe they want to be the only game in town.  Maybe they want to use it."

"Or destroy it."

His hands went to his hips.  "Maybe."

"What else did she say?"

"They were told that Krycek is going after Vanek.  The man told her if Krycek contacts Vanek, they'll kill him like he killed Smoky."

Scully pursed her lips.  "I wonder if Krycek realizes this. Mulder--"

"What?"

"I guess I haven't been thinking about Krycek with everything else that's been going on, but he took off without any supplies at all, and with no way to care for that wound.  I'd assumed as soon as he was finished with Tracy that we'd have it looked at, properly cleaned and treated. He's going to need antibiotics and... You know, I'm not sure he'd even be able to change the dressing by himself if he did have fresh bandages."

"And he's not likely to look for any kind of legitimate help with it.  It would be like advertising that you're some sort of suspicious character. Would make you pretty damn easy to remember." He paused. "I should e-mail him.  Assuming he stops at some point to check his e-mail. Do we have any idea where he is, Scully?"

"He just said he wanted to check out this group that was apparently--at least at one time--headquartered in Pasadena. But nothing about how he planned to get there. Or how he'd find the group once he got to Pasadena, for that matter."

"Or how he was going to make it that far with two unhealed wounds. Though he always seems to manage to find a way to survive." Like a cockroach, he thought, though somehow it sounded wrong, now, to say it.

"True.  He made it out of that missile silo in North Dakota. But I think the hospital--that alarm bell going off--was simply the kind of opportunity he'd take without thinking, because anywhere would be better than being in custody."

"Until you run out of steam. Or into trouble." Mulder pictured Krycek in the shadowed bedroom at Smoky's Reston house. He'd seemed pretty low there. Certainly not in any shape to make it very far on his own. "How would we find him if we needed to?"

"I don't--"

Mulder waited. "What?"

"Ché, Mulder.  His friend Ché.  Apparently he's some sort of computer geek.  And Krycek trusts him.  They seemed very close, actually, the two of them, when we stopped by before we left for Owensburg.  He lives right over in Adams Morgan."

"Then maybe we ought to pay this Ché a little visit."

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 **Just west of Columbia, Missouri  
** 11:45 a.m.

Krycek made his way slowly along the path leading toward the river.  At the edges of the broad, cleared area, cottonwood trees were sending a continuous stream of fluff into the low, steady breeze.

Mona was asleep in the car. She'd brought Bobby a variety of things to keep him busy: a jump rope, one of those little paddles with a rubber ball attached to it, a set-up for playing horseshoes. But eventually he'd tired of those, and anyway, he was a kid; he needed to get out and wear off his energy for the few hours he wasn't stuck inside a moving vehicle. 

The river wasn't visible from the parking area, but Mona'd stopped here before and supposedly it was about a quarter-mile down the path.

"Don't go too far ahead," he called out to Bobby. The kid was about fifty yards in front of him. 

Mona seemed to keep him on a relatively short leash. Not harsh, but he knew well enough where the boundaries were. At least he shouldn't be the type to take off headlong and end up falling into the river. Which was good because he wasn't in any condition to save anybody, and beyond that, he hadn't wanted to disturb Mona by waking her up to tell her they were taking a walk in the first place. He'd looked in the glove box searching for paper to write a note on, though, which is where he'd seen the .22 pistol she kept. It would be better than nothing if he had the chance to take it, though if she noticed it missing, she might call law enforcement, which would bring a focus on him he definitely didn't need.

Krycek looked ahead into the brightness.  Bobby was turning cartwheels in the road, apparently waiting for him to catch up. He'd eaten half of one of Mona's peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but there was still a gnawing in his stomach, or maybe just in his gut, he couldn't tell, and he'd been feeling achy since he woke up.

He'd been wearing the same clothes for three days... No, four.  It'd been Friday night when the old man showed up unexpectedly to haul him away to interrogate his mother, and he'd showered maybe a couple of hours before that, a shower he wasn't likely to forget, his mind stuck on the phone conversation he'd just had with Mulder--that Tracy'd collapsed, that they'd taken her to the hospital and had no idea what was wrong with her.

"Look, Mister!"

Krycek glanced ahead.  He'd nearly caught up with the kid, who was pointing to a marshy area just off the path. A large white bird rose from the water and flew off.

"Egret," he said. He stopped, scanned the area and came up beside the boy. "Look. See that?"

"What?"

He pointed. "On that stump."

"Ooh, yeah."

"Know what it is?"

Bobby shook his head.

"Great blue heron." 

"But it's gray."

Krycek shrugged. "I know. But that's what it's called." 

He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the closest part of the marsh.  The heron tensed, hesitated and finally lifted into the air, flapping slowly upward on huge gray wings, headed east.

Bobby turned and watched until the heron was out of sight.

"Can we go all the way to the river?" he asked.

Krycek turned to look behind him.  They seemed to be about halfway, and as long as he took things slowly, the exercise was bound to do him good. "Yeah, I guess."

Bobby took off running.

"Not too far ahead."

Bobby turned and shook his head.  "I won't."

Near the embankment above the Missouri, Krycek managed to find a fallen tree to sit on.

"It's really big," the boy said, looking out at the wide, muddy flow.

Krycek nodded. Not as wide as the Iset where it flowed through Sverdlovsk, though maybe the difference lay in the fact that he'd been a boy then, when everything looked twice as big than it actually was. He glanced beyond the river to the gently rolling landscape on the other side. There were bluffs farther upstream, the kind that looked like they might hold caves.

He should contact Mulder, warn him that the old men might be watching him. He had the better part of $400 in his pocket, and Ché could get him more, once he was able to call him.  He was without a computer again, the one his mother had given him left behind in Scully's van when the opportunity had come to run. 

All that cooking Che'd done, prepping a dinner that was supposed to be their big celebration of him finally getting out from under the old man's thumb for good.  Well, that much had happened, but not the way either of them had imagined.  Ché didn't know about Tracy.  Hadn't known anything about her, really, beyond the bank account he'd had him set up for her. 

The picture materialized in his mind: Tracy on the chair in his room, yellow dress on, feet up on the chair rungs, trying to keep from laughing, telling him Ché sounded  _interesting_. "Too interesting for someone you'd know," she'd said, and tilted her head the way she did, all that smooth hair slipping to one side. 

Krycek sniffed in a breath. She'd want him to enjoy this--the little cottony things floating in the breeze, the river. The trees and birds.

He looked at the boy, soft skin and gangly limbs, the uneven edges of his hair ruffled by the breeze.

"We should go." He stood. "Wouldn't want to worry your grandmother, have her wake up and wonder where we are."

Bobby turned back for one last look at the river and they started out along the path again.

"You looking forward to seeing your mom?"

"My mom, yeah." The boy looked up at him and wrinkled his nose. "But not Ryan."

"Her boyfriend?" The one who'd sent Mona on this trip in the first place, because he'd been beating on her daughter.

"Yeah. He doesn't like me. That's why I've been living with Nana."

"Good thing you've got Nana in your corner. You're lucky that way."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 **Washington, D.C.  
** 1:05 p.m.

Scully pressed the buzzer below the "Take your chances!" sign and waited.  In the end she'd come alone. After discussing it, she and Mulder had agreed that Ché might be more forthcoming if it didn't look like he was being pressured by two federal agents.

A lock turned, then the doorknob.  Ché's face and surrounding wild curls appeared in the opening.

"Hello," he said, surprised. His face brightened. "You are here with Aleksei?"

"Um, no.  I'm sorry.  I... need some information.  May I come in?"

The face in the doorway became serious.  After a moment he opened the door wider.

"You have news of Aleksei?"

"Yes."

He cleared the books off a rocking chair and motioned for her to sit.

"We didn't actually get introduced the last time," she began.  "I'm Dana Scully."

Ché looked taken aback, then puzzled. "Well, I have heard much about you," he said.  "Sit."

Scully sat.

"Tell me, what is it you need?"

"Krycek is on the run." She paused and moistened her lips. "My partner and I were supposed to apprehend him, and he"--she shrugged--"apparently had other, more pressing things to attend to. He was injured at the time he shot Spender, the Smoking Man. You saw him after that, when we stopped here. But when he ran, he had nothing with him, no way to take care of the wound--"

"You are hunting him to arrest him?"

Scully pursed her lips. "No. I have to admit that we haven't always had the easiest relationship with Krycek... but he's been helpful to Mulder and me recently.  Very helpful, in fact.  If it weren't for Krycek, Mulder and I and his mother would be dead right now.  He took a huge chance in what he did there." Scully cleared her throat. "We're concerned that he may not be in any shape to travel. And we've learned that Spender's group is convinced he's going after a Dr. Maria Vanek--"

"The piranha?"

Scully frowned. "Excuse me?"

"Vanek--Maria Ivanova. Aleksei knew her years ago. Bad memories, very obviously. And then she contacted him recently."

"She's run from the facility where she was experimenting on a group of children. Headed west, at least as far as the Kentucky border. Spender's group has vowed to kill him if he makes contact with her. We thought he should know. Do you have a way to contact him?" 

"You must understand, Miss, I know only what Krycek decides to share with me.  Many times, that is nothing.  Other times"--he shrugged--"he lets me know more than I think even he intends. Aleksei and I, we are like the great rhinoceros and the little bird who lives on his back, pecking away at the bugs that torment his host."  He gave a self-effacing smile.  "And believe me, of the two, I am not the rhinoceros."

Scully smiled in spite of herself. "How did you two become acquainted, if I may ask?"

"I was sixteen," he said, "a naive student in Prague with a fascination for, shall we say, exploring computer data. Things were very primitive in those days. I managed to hack into some government documents--things they would not like to have the public know. So they were out looking for me, and someone invited me to a party at an embassy, and Krycek was there.  Actually he had just made a poor attempt to insult the piranha and she'd shredded him to ribbons--figuratively, of course.  But I noticed, and we got to talking. He was slick. And I was feeling this warning--danger, danger! And yet at the same time he seemed very earnest in saying he would help me escape to America."

"And he did?"

"Yes. I was very grateful. It saved me from my father's fate... He was imprisoned for many years," he added. "And since then, I see Aleksei from time to time. I help him with information and communications, and he helps me. Sometimes I realize it is like playing with fire, dealing with him.  But there's another side to him, too--very loyal, very dedicated." He shrugged. "Altogether a mystery of a man."

"So I've begun to see." She paused. "You may have to wait for him to call you. He no longer has a laptop, so he may only be able to get in touch with you by phone. I'd appreciate a call if you hear from him. Also, I have some information he may find useful in the search he's planning to do."

"I will tell him when he calls. I hope he will call. Things have been difficult for him the last four or five months."

"Actually, it's possible they've gotten more difficult.  Do you know anything about a girl named Tracy?"

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 _From:_ _che74@telcom.com_ __  
To: _mv623@quick.net_    
A word to the wise: The old vulture's flock has learned of your work and will be looking for you. Choose your next nest with care.

  

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 **Mulder's rented room**  
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.  
2:49 p.m.

"I can't believe this, Mulder." She switched off the phone and slammed it onto the desk.  "Okay, yes, after all we've seen, after all the evidence we've had disappear over the years, this fits the pattern perfectly."

"It just doesn't make it any easier to accept," he said, thoughtful. "What exactly did Dr. Wykoff say, Scully?"

She took a deep breath. "That this morning when he went to examine Tracy's body, it was gone.  Not 'gone' as in 'the drawer was empty'; there was another body there, of a girl about the same age and build.  They have no idea who she is."

"I bet it was that man in the hallway." He wagged a finger at her. "I told you there was something about him."

"Besides the fact that he continued to sit there after the fire alarm had gone off?"

"Yeah, besides that.  I almost feel like... like I've seen him before. Somewhere. Like  _we've_ seen him."

She eyed him questioningly and sat down beside him on the bed.

"I have no idea where, though."  He paused. "What about your lab samples? Did Dr. Wykoff check on them?"

She frowned. "I didn't think to ask him. It seems pretty unlikely, though, that they'd disappear, too."

"If you don't want people to know about your work, you clean up everything."

"But Mulder, how would they know what to look for? And where?" A pause. "Okay, I'll call him back."

She reached for the phone and dialed. "Yes, Dr. Wykoff, please." She rolled her eyes and pulled one leg up onto the bed.

"Busy?"

She nodded.

Mulder got up, pulled a cardboard box from beneath the wing chair and started to go through the contents, trying to decide where to put them.  A knock came on the door.

He set the box aside and went to answer it.  It was his landlady's son with a large box--a new microwave oven to replace the one the room had come with. He signed the receipt, waited for the man to explain the trimming they'd be doing to the ivy next week, then took the box and went inside.

Scully was sitting on the bed, phone off, mouth tight.

"What did he say?"

"The fetus had been put in a refrigerator drawer at the hospital. It's gone.  The samples we collected had already been sent to the lab, though.  He's checking on them now."

The phone rang.  Scully reached for it and switched it on. "Yes?"

Mulder could hear the sound of chatter on the other end. He watched his partner's face go from puzzlement to incredulity and back again.

"What did he say?" he asked when she finally switched off the phone.

"It's gone, Mulder. All of it. Every sample we took."

"Then I think we're on to something, Scully.  Something a lot bigger than we realized."

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 **Washington, D.C.  
** 7:25 p.m.

"Sorry I missed dinner the other night."

Ché smiled with relief at the low, sandpaper voice on the other end of the phone line.

"Aleksei. Are you all right? I heard that--"

"Heard what?"

"I received a visit this afternoon, from Agent Scully.  She said you had gone--escaped from them--and that she was afraid that you would have no way to properly take care of the wound you received in your encounter with the old man." He paused. "Also she wanted you to know that the pack of vultures will be on your trail."

"How does she figure that?"

"Evidently one of them showed up on your mother's doorstep this morning to tell her that they knew Mulder had discovered the piranha's research.  Also they assumed you had gone after her, and they said if you make contact with her, they will kill you."

"Fuck."

Ché frowned.  It was a resigned 'fuck', not a characteristically explosive one. Not a good sign with Krycek.

"Aleksei, is everything okay? What can I do to help you?"

"I'm headed for..." There was a long pause. Too long. "Hell, I'm trying to make it to California.  Pasadena.  I found out something the other day, about the groups trying to colonize. There may be a group we never knew about."

"Scully mentioned that she had information that might be helpful to you.  She said something about San Diego. Does that mean anything?"

"Yeah, thanks.  Tell her to send it along."

"Do you have a way to receive it? She said you are without a laptop."

"Gonna have to pick one up, maybe a day or two. Can you put some more money in the emergency account?"

"Of course. How much?"

"Three thousand."

"Very well.  Do you have the ID that goes with it?"

"No." A pause. "The other night, I'd just gotten back to my place on that last run and the old man was there waiting to haul me off. Didn't have time to do anything except wash my face and change my shirt."

Nothing more. Silently, Ché counted to himself. With Krycek it was prudent to wait, not to offer help too quickly, which might offend him.

"Look," the voice came again. "I'm in Omaha. For the moment. Woman's giving me a ride as far as North Platte, Nebraska. Name's Mona Pennington. Driving a big old Mercury wagon, cream with that wood-look stuff on the sides. West Virginia plates KLB 081--"

"Aleksei, are you in danger from this woman?"

"No." There was an attempt at a laugh. Then a pause and the static of a breath pushed out. "I'm just... I think I'm not in any shape to be doing this now. I think the wound may be infected, and... hell, I can't even patch gauze and tape together worth shit, much less take care of whatever else it needs."

"Aleksei, you need help." Ché reddened; the words had just spilled out. He cringed, waiting for the inevitable push-back. Which didn't come.

"There's a woman--doctor--who took care of me after... after the silo. She was a good doctor.  Really good. She's in Colorado; it isn't that far from where we're headed."

"And you want me to find some contact information, yes?"

"Yeah."

"Name?"

"Dr. Carrie Phillips.  She teaches at the university in Boulder, but I think she lives somewhere else. Some town in the area."

"And you want me to contact her?"

Silence on the other end. Ché glanced up, at the early evening light reflecting off a pair of windows across the street.

"No, I'd better do it," the reply came finally. "Thanks. Number here's 402-555-1607. I'll be here tonight, but we're moving out early in the morning."

"Will do, my friend. I'll get right on it. You can count on me."

 _Hang in there_ , he was tempted to add, but managed to refrain himself.  Certainly Krycek _seemed_  like he was hanging on by a thread of one sort or another. Why would he give his traveling companion's name and car description unless there was the possibility someone would need it to trace him if he disappeared?

To say nothing of the story Scully had told, of Aleksei laid up from another gunshot wound--one that, to her credit, she admitted having inflicted herself--and the girl Tracy, for whom he'd set up the bank account, taking care of him after he'd been discharged from the hospital. And something else occurring in the midst of all that to draw his hard-edged, tightly-controlled, calculating assassin friend to a hospital bed to hold the girl as she lay dying.

Ché set the phone aside, flipped up a new browser and quickly typed in a URL.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 **Carravaggio's Restaurant**  
Washington, D.C.  
7:30 p.m.

Mulder peered between the blinds in the narrow window.

"Anyone coming yet?"

"Not yet," he said. "Scully, I can't believe Skinner was able to get a private room on such short notice."

"Being Assistant Director must have its perks."

"You know," he said, "watching everyone out there eating is making me really hungry. You remember the last time we were here?"

"Yes, I do indeed." She smiled broadly. "I remember sitting on that bench outside, waiting for our food to be ready"--she came up beside him--"and then eating in the park."

"And you falling asleep there." He slipped an arm around her waist but quickly withdrew it. "Looks like we're on."

A moment later the door opened and Walter Skinner stepped inside.

"Agents."

"Sir."

They'd chosen Carravaggio's because it was always busy, and because there were two entrances.  Hopefully anyone tailing one of them--if there were anyone--wouldn't notice the others coming or going.

As they were sitting down, the door opened again and Will Wilkins appeared, grinning when he saw them.

"Will, great to see you," Scully said. She paused. "Are you strong enough to be doing this?"

"I figure I'm good for about an hour," he said. "Manny dropped me off. He said he'll come back around for me when we're done. I do believe I'll claim that soft chair over there in the corner, though."

"He's a good analyst," Skinner said. "I figured he could add some perspective to what we're dealing with."

"Which is?" Will said.

"Several things that have come to light in the last few days," Scully said. "Mulder discovered evidence that a doctor at the Beeson-Lymon plant has been experimenting on three children at the direction of the Smoking Man. She's disappeared now--"

"How does this fit with resuming the investigation?"

"Apparently Old Smoky had this little private program going on the side," Mulder said. "But the group he was a part of has been receiving beryllium under the table from the plant, probably from Beeson personally."

Will looked puzzled. "So, can't we nail them for that?"

"Unfortunately," Skinner said, "These men have collaborators throughout the Bureau. I can't say that we'll get anywhere trying to press charges of any kind in this case, if the end result is that it will cut off their supply of something they want."

"Are you kidding me?" Will frowned.

"Unfortunately, no. It would be the same as what happened when Mulder tried to show his tape of the Cancer Man."

"All of a sudden," Mulder said, "the Director was called away on a matter of"--he made air quotes--"national security.  And everyone else was mysteriously in meetings all day."

"Until they'd figured out a way to eliminate our request," Scully added.

"You mean Krycek going after the tape?"

"Bingo." Mulder frowned, picturing the knife against Scully's throat.

"So this whole thing is going to go away?" Will said. "Like the last time? What will I tell Rita?"

"Actually," Skinner said, "the whole investigation may turn out to be a non-issue. Harlan Beeson is in a coma. His attorney is out of the country at the moment; we're trying to contact him to find out what sort of succession Beeson's planned for the company.  But rumor has it that his son has been written out of the will."

"So there's a chance that the plant could be sold?" Scully asked.

"These men," Mulder said, "Smoky's associates. They'll go right to the new owners and negotiate some sort of deal they can't refuse."

Will shook his head. "And their berylllium deal and the plant conditions that are killing workers will go right on along, just like always."

"Krycek said they're selling the beryllium to help finance their hy--" Scully stopped abruptly and colored. Her lips pressed into a thin line.

Skinner and Wilkins looked puzzled.

Finally Mulder cleared his throat. "Maybe here's where we get down to the real problem."

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 ** Omaha, Nebraska  
** 8:08 p.m .

Krycek looked at the stack of clothes on the bed.  By the time they'd gotten to Omaha, Mona had been running on empty again, and beyond that, he needed some time alone.  So he'd paid for two motel rooms and they'd agreed to set out again on the last leg of their trip at 5 a.m.

Bobby had been ecstatic to see that there was a swimming pool, and he'd agreed to watch the boy in exchange for Mona going to the local Walmart to pick up a list of clothes and supplies he needed.  The hours in the car should have rested him, but he was running a fever again and feeling worse than he had this morning. Mona'd been a good shopper, though, had gotten exactly what he'd specified, and in the meantime Bobby'd splashed and played himself into a state of kid bliss. 

Sitting there watching the boy, it had dawned on him that it had been nearly a year since he'd hauled Gibson Praise to New Mexico. He remembered the stop they'd made at a state recreation area in the middle of the night, Gibson splashing in the warm shallows of the lake in the dark after too many hours of driving and stickiness. The kid must hate him now for delivering him to the consortium research team, in the kind of slow-smoldering way he'd hated his mother all those years for giving him away. Because in the end, what they'd done to Gibson was worse than anything he could have imagined.

At least Tracy hadn't fallen into their clutches. It would have been a fate worse than the one she ended up with.

He fingered the edge of one of the new T-shirts absently, then pushed it aside and went through the toiletries, reaching for the razor and then setting it down again.  Maybe in the morning, if he felt better.

He was going to have to do this--call Carrie Phillips, see if she could help him with the wound. They were bound to be coming after him, and the last thing he'd want would be to put Carrie and her son Tyler in danger.  But he'd had a head start; it would take the old men a while to pick up on his trail, if they found it at all. At least Mulder and Scully weren't likely to tell anything they knew. And it wasn't like he had to stick around at Carrie's forever.

Still, what would he say?  Hi, it's me, the guy with the internal radiation burns and the nightmares from three years ago. Any interest in helping me out again?

Maybe she'd forgotten. Maybe she was out of town, or busy with some project of Tyler's, or up to her ears in papers to grade, or a research project.

He sat down on the bed, leaned forward and rested his head in his hand. Let his focus float until he was nothing more than the steady beat of his pulse. His eyes watered and burned. When he choked on a breath, he lay back, squeezed his lids shut and let the wetness trickle from the corners of his eyes into his damp hair beside his temples. For a moment he could almost feel her, just the hint of a touch, as if she were caught inside something and couldn't quite reach through to him. 

But he'd seen enough death and enough bodies to know what final was.  When it was over, there was nothing, no matter how much he might like it to be otherwise.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 **Amarillo, Texas  
** 8:18 p.m.

Maria Vanek looked out her motel room window into the parking lot beyond.  The truck was repainted now, navy blue instead of its former white, and the canopy top had been replaced with a vinyl tonneau cover, which should make it virtually invisible to those looking for Brian's homely little pickup. She'd managed to obtain two more sets of license plates while wandering around this afternoon, which made up somewhat for having to spend an entire extra day in this parched, insufferable town. It indicated something--and definitely not something good--when a community's claim to fame was a series of upended old cars planted in a field beyond the city limits.

Perhaps she should go swimming. It would be good to get some exercise before having to sit for ten hours in the truck tomorrow.  Albuquerque was tomorrow's destination, and hopefully the scenery would have changed for the better by the time she arrived there.

Maria went to her suitcase and searched for her bathing suit. Perhaps time in the water would also help to chase away the bank of gray clouds hovering at the back of her mind. At least, temporarily. The message from Ché, Krycek's little messenger, had only served to underscore the gravity of her situation. Spender's group would be out to find her, hoping they could cull the secrets of her research. No doubt Mr. Disguised Custodian/FBI agent Fox Mulder--he of the deliberately injured palm--would be shaping up whatever evidence he had in order to file charges against her for... for something: child abuse or whatever allegations the FBI's lawyers thought would stick. At the least, there would be some kind of warrant out for her arrest. They couldn't possibly have enough evidence to prove anything as it was; they'd want more than anything to be able to interrogate her. 

In reality, her situation was every bit as grave as it appeared. She had cash--eight thousand dollars she'd squirreled away for just such an eventuality--but that would run out soon enough without a salary. In California, no doubt, she could locate someone who could get her a high-quality fake ID; there were so many undocumenteds there, from so many different places, that the demand for such things would no doubt be high.

And her planned approach to Mr. Lew?  No doubt it was a long shot, but it was the only one she could see at the moment. Their message board exchanges had always been cordial, his analytical skills and his background evident from their many discussions. He worked at a huge pharmaceutical company north of L.A., in one of those towns people settled in to raise children away from the evils of urban life, where hiking trails and spacious yards promised room to really breathe. Such a place might also offer her a new base of operations.

At this point she had to examine the possibility, having at her disposal no other that she could see.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 **Carravaggio's Restaurant**  
Washington, D.C.  
8:20 p.m.

"Wow," Will said, wiping a hand across his brow. "That puts an entirely new spin on reality."

"I found it all extremely implausible myself," Scully said, "until I kept coming across evidence that, frankly, I can't find any way to refute."

"If you two go investigating these leads of yours," Skinner said, "Tracy's aunt and uncle, and whatever you may either find in California or learn from Krycek... I don't see how it could benefit you to be officially attached to the Bureau. Aside from giving you a salary, of course."

"Which is a big deal for some of us unemployed types." Mulder forced a smile. "Sad but true."

"But any reports you'd make... There would be no way to keep them from getting into the wrong hands.  Hell, we don't even know who most of these people are, Mulder."

"Except after they're finished with one of their cronies," Mulder said. "Like Blevins. Blood on the office carpeting and a handgun conveniently placed next to the body. Real subtlety."

Skinner sighed. "True. But I think it proves the point. Any reports you made would only make it easy for them to track you."

Will frowned. "How far are they likely to get without a badge, though? You know, you try to interview folks, or get information from some local PD; they're not likely to open up to a private citizen.  I doubt that 'I used to be an FBI agent' is likely to get them very far."

The corner of Skinner's mouth pulled.

"What if," Will said, "you were to keep Scully on the payroll and assign her to--" He turned to Scully. "You don't have an assigned partner at the moment, do you?"

Scully shook her head. "No."

"Then what if you attached her to Manny's and my investigations as a sort of third wheel. These guys looking for your Dr. Jeckyll, they're not going to mind if you find her, right?  I mean, if she's got something they want and we find her, it saves them the trouble. So we drop the Beeson-Lymon case, at least for now, and we switch to tracking this perp. It's still going to tie in to the plant, and give us a reason to be interviewing people there. Hell, we may even find out something that will help us nail Beeson to the wall somewhere down the road."

"But there are leads Mulder and I--"

"So then you take a few days, or a week, and go track down your leads. We can still put your signature on the reports, and as far as these shadow-people know, you've been with us."

"And I decide not to submit Mulder's name for reinstatement, is that it?" Skinner asked.

"You can't be too careful about that guy Spooky," Mulder said. He waggled his eyebrows weakly.

"If you can put us on a few investigations that might help these two," Will said, "it would be a start, and we could re-evaluate down the road. It might be enough to make them think Scully's changed her stripes, gone straight finally"--he grinned--"so that they stop paying attention. Lull 'em into complacency. And I'm not trying to put you on the spot, Chief, asking for non-legitimate work.  Bureau's got an interest in this Vanek, I'd think, and whatever information her investigation might turn up."

Skinner stood hands-on-hips in the corner. He glanced from Mulder to Scully and let out a sigh. "What do you two think? You're the ones most directly affected here."

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

** Omaha, Nebraska  
9:16 p.m. **

Krycek reached for the phone and held it a moment, then punched in the number written on the little notepad on the bedside table.  The buzzing inside him, which had been a low backbeat, strengthened and surged to the foreground.

Two rings. Three rings. Four.

The one thing he hadn't thought of was the possibility of her not answering.

Fifth ring, and the answering machine kicked in.

"Hi. You've reached Dr. Phillips.  Or not reached me; sorry about that!  Leave me a message and I'll connect with you as soon as I can.  Thanks."

Krycek pushed out a breath. "This is Alex Krycek. You took care of me a few years back at John Davies' house in Boulder.  I had some... chemical burns..." What if she didn't get the message until after they'd left?  What if she were out of the country somewhere on vacation?  "Anyway, I'll be in the general area by tomorrow and I've got a wound I could use a little help with--"

"Alex? Is that you? 34 Alpenglow Drive?"

He let out a half-held breath in relief and sank back against the pillow. "Yeah. I thought maybe you'd forgotten."

"Your case was like nothing I've ever seen before or since, so no, not forgotten. How are things with you?"

His mouth opened, but no words came.

_Think, stupid._

"They've been better."

"They'd been better when you were here before. I hope it's not a pattern for you.  So what do you need?"

"I've got a... someone winged me with a bullet. I was lucky--hit my side, about waist-high. Not far enough in to hit anything vital. But it looks like maybe it's infected now, and I'm having trouble cleaning it up--"

"Is the bullet in the wound?"

"Never was. It just winged me."

"How long ago did this happen? Has anyone looked at it?"

"Two days ago. Two and a half. Someone who's a doctor cleaned it up a little at first, but I've been on the road..."

This was getting to sound worse and worse. Why would she even touch a situation like this?

"Did they give you any antibiotics?"

"No, it's... circumstances are kind of hard to explain.  Wasn't able to take a shower, either, until a couple of hours ago. Probably didn't help."

"And how are you feeling in general?"

"Think I'm running a fever.  Just feel kind of... bad. Weak. No energy."

"Is your heart rate high?  Have you been having chills?"

"No."

"Okay, that's good. And where are you now?"

"Omaha. I'm riding with someone as far as North Platte. Looks to be about four hours north of you."

"I can't go that far; I've got a final to give tomorrow, but if you can make it to Sterling, that's about halfway.  I could drive out and pick you up there."

"Okay, I'll see what I can do. What's your time frame?"

"My final's in the afternoon.  Three o'clock."

"Okay. I"ll be in touch." He paused. Closed his eyes. "Look, I appreciate it. You were... a big help before. Major help."

"Well, thanks for saying so."

"There's... uh... one more thing.  I don't want to disrupt your lives or anything, you and Tyler, but there might be somebody out looking for me, someone I'd rather avoid. Just wanted you to know I'm not exactly risk-free."

Empty air on the other end of the line.

"As I recall, your circumstances were rather shadowy before. But we all survived." A pause. "At the moment, I think a little disruption may be exactly what this doctor needs."

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 **Washington, D.C.  
** 9:20 p.m.

Mulder stared out at the water splashing in the fountain in the middle of the square. Scully's head was against his shoulder.

"What do you think, Scully?"

Her hand squeezed against his leg. "I guess I just hoped I could recapture the feeling I had the last time I was here. You know, before we knew about Dr. Vanek's work. Before Tracy fell ill."

"Before you stood in a room with Smoky thinking you were never going to make it out alive?"

"Yes, that." She shifted against him. "You know, if Krycek hadn't been there, he might have asked  _you_  to shoot your mother."

"I know. I've been thinking about that." He let out a sigh. "A lot."

She looked up at him. "What do you think about this arrangement with the Bureau, Mulder? You were pretty quiet back there."

He shrugged. "It is what it is. It probably gives us our best chance at making progress right now." He caught his lower lip between his teeth and held it.

"You know, Mulder, my expenses on the road will be covered. And the bed fits two. It doesn't cost any more in gas for you to be there. For that matter, I never eat a full meal."

"I know, Scully."

"And as Will said, we can re-evaluate down the road."

He nodded, finally managing to pull his focus away from the falling water to the woman beside him. He smiled.

"What?" she said.

His hand against her waist pulled her closer. "At least I don't need an excuse to kiss you this time."

"No," she said, the corners of her mouth pulling into a smile. "No, you don't, Mulder."

With the other hand he brushed the hair back from her face. He leaned in, brushing her cheek with his lips. Found her mouth and let the strength of her response reassure him.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

** 10:22 p.m. **

The brown-haired woman stepped into the darkened hallway. At the far end, she could see her companion standing in the doorway to the small room. After a moment, she came up behind him.

"You've done all you can, you know, D-Four."

His focus remained on the shadowed figure in the bed.  Moonlight filtered through the lace curtains, throwing patterns on the quilt and pillow, a hillscape in muted pastels.

"I know. But will it be enough?"

"New paths of any sort are forbidden," she said.

"I've already stepped over that line. And so have you, by helping me."

"We're not under the same strict regulations as you."

"Because your kind chose to step away many years ago. But it doesn't mean you won't be treated like anyone else if we're discovered."

"Then we must not be discovered," she said simply.

A sound came from the bed: an escape of breath and a faint moan, almost like the note of a song. The quilt moved slightly and then was still again.

"There's still time to turn back," she said. "To remain safe."

"No," he said. "I've stepped past that line. Now--finally--is the time to act."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> About the scene Half-Life:  
> #1: This introductory scene was inspired by a RATales (Krycek-fic list) challenge based on a strange news item in which a man entered an International House of Pancakes restaurant, pulled a gun and demanded a dollar from each customer... and someone to love. The quirky challenge elements wouldn't leave my mind, and eventually I began to see how they could work into this scenario just a few hours after the end of Sanctuary.  
> #2: Though some readers may find it unusual, I employed a second-person format partly because this is the way the story came to me. But in addition, second-person seems to be a convenient way for a character to distance himself emotionally from highly-charged subject matter, allowing him to open up and talk about things he might balk at mentioning if the narrative were presented in first-person.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thursday, May 27, 1999**

Longmont, Colorado  
4:47 a.m.

Carrie Phillips groped for the ringing phone, blinking in the dark to coax some moisture into her eyes. The glowing numbers on the clock read 4:47.

"Carrie Phillips." She sounded every bit as groggy as she felt.

"This is Alex. Just wanted you to know that we're leaving here now. Everything looks like a go. Woman I'm riding with says she's got a couple of nephews in North Platte, so at least one of them should be able to take me to Sterling. But I'll call you if things change or fall through."

"How are you doing compared to last night, Alex?"

"About the same.  As far as I can tell."

"No worse?  Tell me the truth. I know guys like to downplay the bad stuff."

"No. No worse."

"Okay, good. You just get yourself here and I'll take over from there."

"Where should we meet you?"

"There's a place called Overland Trail Park.  It's right off the interstate. Exit 125."

"Overland Trail. Got it."

"Call me from North Platte when you're ready to leave."

"Yeah."

"Okay, I"ll wait to hear from you.  Have a safe trip."

A click came from the other end of the line. Carrie set the phone back on the receiver and sank back against the pillow. She'd managed to resist the urge to say _Thank God you're not worse_. Or _Don't you dare go septic on me_.

Because she was afraid of losing someone again, her therapist would point out. Even though in this case it wasn't family, but simply a patient she'd worked with for a period of weeks three years earlier.

Though it had hardly been an ordinary case. She'd been approached by the British and very gentlemanly Mr. Davies, wondering if she "might be willing to take on a rather unique and urgent case".

"You've come very highly recommended," he'd added, as if to enhance the allure of his offer. She wondered now just who had recommended her, or whether he'd profiled her somehow and seen someone looking for an opportunity, a change. Maybe a lone wolf.

Or a lost wolf.

She well remembered Alex's warning when he'd contacted her after he left her care: that she should cut ties with Davies and have no more contact with him for her own safety. And the case itself: In spite of her frantic work to find a cause for the chemical burns her patient had sustained, the internal effects had eventually vanished almost on their own, as if the substance that had caused them wanted to leave no trace of itself to be examined.

Carrie rolled to the edge of the bed and got up. From the west window she could see the full moon slipping behind the mountain peaks in the distance, a glowing white disk against the deep blue of waning night.

What would have brought her former patient back to see her now? And would his story this time be less strange than the one he'd told her three years earlier as she tried to ease him through the flashbacks his experience had induced?

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Mulder's rented room**  
Georgetown, Washington DC  
6:08 a.m.

Mulder eased the packing tape and scissors from the desk drawer and took them into the bathroom, padding quietly around the bed so as not to wake Scully. There was a freestanding cabinet just big enough to use as a workspace, and he stood in front of it adding layers of old newspaper to the shipping box to cushion its bubble-wrapped contents.

He paused momentarily and glared at his bandaged right hand. At the time, grabbing the broken glass had seemed the only way to gain plausible access to Dr. Vanek's office. Or maybe he'd just been too eager. It was Scully, in the end, who'd ended up with the evidence of Vanek's experiments on the Connors kids. And having to live with the aftermath of his decision while his hand healed was getting old.

Mulder turned and glanced through the doorway at Scully asleep in his bed. She was scheduled to fly to Owensburg with Will's partner, Manny Acosta, later in the morning.  He'd be going, too, but he'd had to arrange for his own flight, which would arrive two hours later. Luckily frequent flyer miles would pay for the ticket, but his backlog of them wouldn't last forever.

It made perfect sense, Scully filling in for Wilkins until he was on his feet again. She'd been involved in the case for weeks, so her name on the reports wasn't likely to raise a red flag for anyone from Smoky's group. And as Will had pointed out, the fact that their official task would be to find Dr. Vanek would only be to the group's advantage.  No risk to Scully there.

Potentially not the same for Angie Connors' three kids, though. Hopefully Scully and Acosta could bury any references to Angie's kids that Vanek might have left behind; otherwise Smoky's consortium pals might easily decide that child abduction was their next order of business. Meeting with Angie was at the top of his list. After that, he'd check in with Sandy Miller and Rita Johnston and try to explain why the investigation they were so personally invested in was being shelved yet again.

"Mulder?" Scully stood in the doorway, hair mussed. "What are you doing? And at this hour?"

He shrugged. "Couldn't sleep. I figured I'd get Mom's laptop packed up and back to her ASAP so we can keep in touch."

"I hope she doesn't get any more visits--or threats--from those men from Spender's group."

"If she does, at least she can let us know right away."

"True."

"Oh, you got an e-mail from Krycek's friend."

One of her eyebrows rose.

"He said Krycek is on his way to meet up with some doctor he knows who'll be treating the wound he got in Reston."

"Good. At least we won't lose our source of information then." She paused. "Or yours, if he follows through on his promise to help you find out about your sister."

He bit his lip and nodded. "Krycek said the same thing Wilkins said--that I should fade into the background and not make myself a target for Smoky's group, put out that I've gone in some other direction so they'll leave me alone."

"The relentless Spooky Mulder." Her eyebrows rose. "That could be a tough impression to turn around. Have you come up with a plausible cover story yet?"

He shook his head. "But I'm thinking about it."

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**7:26 a.m.**

The brown-haired woman paused in the doorway to the little room. D-Four sat in a chair beside the bed. He smoothed a hand slowly over the shaved head on the pillow, then held it slightly away and repeated the motion in reverse. The eyes in the pale face opened, glassy and uncomprehending, and struggled to focus. Four took hold of one limp wrist and held up a photograph with the other.

Their patient stared awkwardly at the print, as if trying to swim forward into it and gain some measure of comprehension. After a moment there was a grunt, followed by a moan. Immediately the photograph was withdrawn. Four's hand returned to its position above the smooth head and traced an arc slowly across the top, from ear to ear.

He turned to look at his companion in the doorway. "Obviously it's not enough yet, Eighteen," he said.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Grand Island, Nebraska**  
7:35 a.m.

Krycek eased himself into the back seat, pushed aside a sweatshirt and lay down. In the front passenger seat, Bobby was bouncy.

"We're along the river now.  Look, Jeff!"

Krycek pulled up and glanced out the window.  A broad, shallow body of water had appeared just beyond the edge of the road.

"You know what it means, right?" Mona said.

"It means only two hours to go!" Bobby said enthusiastically.

Krycek managed a smile.

Bobby turned around to face him. "And Nana's going to take me to Bailey Yard."

Krycek frowned."What's that?"

"Biggest rail yard in the world," came Mona's answer from the front.

"So you like trains?" he said.

The boy nodded eagerly.

"Hey, Bobby," Mona said, tugging on the side of his shirt. "Time to let Jeff have a rest back there. We'll be coming up on the sandhill cranes anytime now. It's not really their season, but there's always a few strays around.  You want to count 'em?"

"Yeah," he said. "I bet I can find more than you, Nana."

"Maybe that's because I'd best be keeping my eyes on the road," Mona said, a smile in her voice.

Krycek lay down again and shifted, searching for a comfortable position. He'd managed to sit up in front for the first couple of hours, but now he was more than ready for a rest. He'd taken one of the pain pills when they made a pit stop a few miles back.  A little over two more hours with Mona and the kid, then a couple more with whichever nephew would end up taking him to Sterling. And a final two to Longmont with Carrie. Which was just about six hours too many, but he'd just have to tough it out.

He glanced out the window above his head. Somehow the sky felt huge here, the vastness of it spread with a thick layer of jostling clouds, lighter on top, gray-tinged underneath, with pale blue sky peeking through between them.

It was Thursday. It had been exactly a week since he and Tracy had taken their trip to Pennsylvania. A week and the world had turned itself inside out.

He closed his eyes, saw himself lying upstairs in her bed, bundled in blankets, rain pinging against the window. Tracy sat crosslegged beside him, singing softly, her face almost with a glow to it, fingers knit tightly between his.

He swallowed against the sudden ache, rode it as it gradually peaked and eventually began to subside. Curled his hand tight, even though there were no fingers to press back against his own.

Focused on his breathing.

Gradually the hum of the car's motor filled in around him.

"Three--" It was Bobby. "Four, five... seven of them, Nana!"

"I saw four," she said. "Keep it down, kiddo. Jeff's trying to rest."

Curtains. Twice last night he'd woken up with an image of Ché's living room curtains at the edge of his mind, which made no sense. Granted, he'd stayed with Ché for a few days when he'd first come from having the prosthesis made in Brussels, before he'd gone off in search of Mulder's source, who'd turned out to be Marita. He'd slept on a mattress behind Ché's couch. The lace curtains had been right in his line of sight, hanging in the window.

They were there when he got the place, Ché'd protested when he'd ribbed him about them. Whatever. But they reminded him of his mother's place, and the guy deserved a nice reminder of home.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Owensburg, Kentucky**  
10:18 a.m.

The cell door clanked open.

"You're free to go," the deputy said. "Someone's waiting for you out in the lobby." He gestured with a thumb.

Diana worked to compose herself. Who had showed up to bail her out? She straightened her sweater and brushed her hands over the wrinkles in her pants.

Two figures in trench coats approached as she came to the end of the hallway, one broad and spreading, the other short and thin-faced with short silver hair.

"We heard you'd been apprehended," the larger man said. "We assumed that under the circumstances, you'd need assistance."

"Thank you," Diana said. "I did. I definitely appreciate this."

"We have information for you," the slim man said. "And questions."

"I have questions as well."

The large man led the way to the door.  Outside, they stepped into a waiting limousine. Diana took the rear-facing seat opposite the other two.

"Go," the broad man called to the driver in his dry voice once all three were settled. He turned his focus to her.  "We don't know whether you've heard the news about Spender."

"I was informed, yes.  Very briefly." Her jaw set. "But what happened?"

"Apparently he was involved in a personal vendetta against Fox Mulder. Seems less than judicious; Mulder has been out of the game for a number of weeks now--"

"Fox Mulder was here.  He's the one who told me."

The two men exchanged frowns. "What was he doing here?"

"I don't know.  He mentioned the name of a female I was supposed to retrieve--"

"For your father?"

"Yes."

"Who was she? What did he want with her?"

"I have no idea. I only had a first name for her. She was young, about eighteen. I discovered she'd taken ill suddenly and was in the hospital, but when I went looking for her there, they stopped me. It appears that they knew I was coming."

"So Mulder knew about the girl. What else did he say?"

"Something about a doctor from the beryllium plant. That she'd been experimenting on three children. He was livid."

"Dr. Vanek?  Dr. Maria Vanek."

"Yes."

"What kind of experiments?"

"He didn't say." There was no use laying out every last card she had at this point. Besides, she only had Fox's word for what the purpose of the experiments was, and he was known to jump to conclusions.

"I don't like this," the broad man said, frowning. "Evidently Mulder's spirit has not been crushed as Spender led us to believe."

"He was fond of overstatement," the thin man said. 

Diana leaned forward. "What happened to my father?"

"He was found in a house he owns in Reston. Vacant house. Shot through the heart. Evidently Mulder was there, and his partner. His mother, as well." The broad man paused. "From what we hear, he was killed by Alex Krycek."

"Krycek?" She'd heard of him, had heard her father complain about him from time to time. Sometimes tactically useful, but untrustworthy, an opportunist. A man Fox hated; her father had gotten a gleam in his eye when he noted that, as if there were something triumphant in the fact.

"We don't know the circumstances beyond that."

The thin man cleared his throat. "Was that your only reason for being here? To retrieve the girl?"

"I came to talk to Mr. Beeson. Someone sent him a threatening letter last week about the beryllium deaths. I assured him we'd take care of it. We didn't want Beeson to have any reason to halt our shipments."

"Well, Beeson is out of the picture now," the thin man said. "He took an overdose of pills the other day. He's in a coma."

They had reached the edge of the town. The car turned onto a country road, heading east. Overgrown fields of grasses, lush and swollen from rain and spring warmth, spread out on both sides, bordered by rusty wire fences. Instinctively, Diana reached for the armrest.

"You know my record," she said, tension beginning to stir in her stomach. "The extent of the information I kept on the abductees, the years I've dedicated--"

"You know nothing more about Dr. Vanek or her work?" the broad man said.

"I'd never heard of her until I came here."

"Are you sure?" the thin man asked. "If you have any information of value--"

Diana shook her head. "Truly. I'd never heard of her until Fox Mulder--"

The thin man leaned toward his companion. "She's of no use to us."

Time thickened. Diana watched the larger man's index finger press a button on the armrest as if in slow motion. Abruptly, the car stopped.

"Step out, please."

She saw the big man shift, felt herself sliding toward the door. She squinted against sudden brightness as the door was pushed open. Her feet touched the ground, but two steps later she stumbled into a low spot camouflaged by grasses at the edge of the road and fell to her knees. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the fat man's hand, the length of the gun barrel elongated by the silencer. A brief sound, like air being sucked quickly out of a vial, and she was on her back, wide-eyed, staring blankly at the clouds passing in the intense blue overhead.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Sterling, Colorado**  
11:43 a.m.

"There." Krycek nodded toward the sign for Exit 125. He didn't dare point; there was no way to disguise the smear of blood on his hand.

The driver glanced in the rear view mirror and changed lanes without signaling.

Krycek closed his eyes momentarily. He was ready to be out of this truck. He was tired of traveling. He felt like shit, the new wound was doing a steady smolder in his side, rubbing against the waistband of his pants, and to top it off, the damn thing had started to bleed at some point before they hit North Platte. Mona had noticed it when they got out of the car and went to say their goodbyes. She hadn't made a big deal of out of it; he was glad of that. She'd just said, "I think you've got a problem there" and then smoothly switched topics.

There was a red stain on the right side of his shirt now, which he'd been careful to hide with his arm, but the smear on his hand, where he'd touched it without thinking, was another story. Hopefully Travis wouldn't be the type who wanted to shake hands at the end.  Probably not; the kid was a talker and he deliberately hadn't played along. He wasn't going to miss the kid's choice of radio stations, either.

The exit appeared and Travis took it. At the stop light they turned left into the entrance to the park and museum. Krycek scanned the parking area, looking for Carrie's white Volvo, wondering suddenly whether she'd still be driving the same car. 

There. She was standing between two cars. She waved when she saw him.

"Pull in here," he said.

He remembered her short hair, blonde mixed with gray, but it was salt-and-pepper now; she definitely looked older.  Her smile when she saw him, though, was as welcoming ever.

"Hey, stranger," she said when he'd rolled down the window.

"Hi." He turned to Travis. "Thanks for the ride. I appreciate it." He turned back to Carrie. "I've got a bag in the back there," he said, nodding toward the truck's bed.

Now for the inevitable. 

He reached across and managed to undo the seatbelt without too much fumbling around. Luckily, Travis's focus was on a girl in short shorts walking across the grass. He opened the door, eased himself out and waited for Carrie to turn around. He wasn't shaking visibly and he had--hopefully--about enough energy left to get himself from where he was to the passenger side of her car. He'd had to sit up straight for the last two hours--not his choice, but the truck's seats had allowed no comfortable position. He set his jaw.

Carrie was putting his bag in the trunk. She closed it now and looked up. Predictable surprise--the open mouth and the hesitation before an attempt to smooth it over. It was bad enough having lost the arm, but having to put up with the predictable reactions was its own special kind of hell.

"Probably should have warned you," he said. "No way it doesn't come as a shock."

"Wow, you're right. 'Surprise' doesn't exactly cover it." A momentary shift of her gaze and she frowned. "You've got blood on your shirt, you know," she said quietly, coming closer.

"Yeah, I... Happened a while before we got to North Platte.  Nothing I could do about it."

"Look, Alex, you may want to walk around for a few minutes or get something to eat, but get in the car first. Let me take a look at this."

He had no desire to argue. He made his way to the passenger door, opened it and got in. On the left, he could see Travis's brown truck pulling away. Almost immediately Carrie was there, reclining the seat, fingering the hem of his shirt.

"It's stuck to the wound," she said. "Can you hand me that water bottle on the console?"

He rolled to reach it.

"Oh, gosh. Sorry. I'll learn, just give me a little time."

He handed her the bottle. "No problem."

She dribbled water on the T-shirt until it finally came away from the wound, then inspected the scene underneath. "Wow, this is messy. And yes, it's infected. How badly is the question." A hand smoothed across his forehead and paused there. "You're running a fever."

Another hand took his wrist. Krycek let his eyes close and waited while she took his pulse. Whatever strength he'd used to keep himself upright for the last two hours seemed to have vanished. All he wanted now was to lie here and not have to move, preferrably for hours.

"At least your heart rate's still normal," she said, letting go of his wrist. "Which is a good sign." She let out a sigh. "Look, I'm going to clean this up as much as I can before we go."

A pause.

"Alex?"

"Yeah?" He opened his eyes.

"Just making sure you're still with me."

"Yeah, I'm just..." He looked away. "Just feel like I've hit the wall."

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Home of Dr. Maria Vanek**  
Owensburg, Kentucky  
1:18 p.m.

"Find anything yet?"

Scully looked up to find Manny Acosta leaning through the doorway. He was as Will had described him, a boxer in Armani, eager to get on with the main event. It was quite the adjustment after Mulder's more casual pace.

"No," she said. "I've gone through the other four drawers"--she indicated the file cabinet beside her--"and this is the last. She was very careful. There's nothing in here dealing with her work. It's likely she hasn't left anything behind."

"Not intentionally."

"Agreed." She paused. "What about you?"

He shrugged. "Nothing yet. I'm going through the stuff in the basement now."

"Well, I hope you have better luck than I'm having."

Manny raised an eyebrow and then disappeared from the doorway. Scully listened as his footsteps receded toward the back of the house. After a moment she glanced at her watch. No wonder she was feeling hungry.

She stood and stretched. Most of the drawers had been no more than a quarter full, leaving room for the possibility that large numbers of files had been removed and taken when Vanek ran. What was left was a compendium of the usual records any householder would keep: insurance documents, utility bills, home repairs and improvements, warranties. A journal of plants--when they'd been planted, how often they'd been fertilized, measurements of growth from year to year. Surprising for the average gardener, perhaps, but not for a researcher used to charting the progress of her work.

A knock came on the window.  Scully peered over the desk to find a small woman in a broad sun hat leaning through the hydrangea bushes to reach the glass. Scully suppressed a smile. This could be the woman she'd heard about from Mulder and Sandy Miller, the town gossip and, from what she understood, Dr. Vanek's neighbor from hell, Mrs. Peltier. Perhaps she'd have some useful information to share.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Interstate 76, Colorado**  
1:22 p.m.

Krycek woke with a start from a dream where he was falling. He twitched, glanced up--car ceiling--then over at Carrie, whose eyes were still wide from the abrupt snort he'd let out.

"Sorry," he said, and wiped a hand across his face. He closed his eyes briefly and opened them again. A now-familiar sick feeling filtered in around him. Above the dashboard, all he could see were white clouds strewn across the blue overhead.

"Where are we?"

"You mean, are we there yet?" Carrie asked, a smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. "No, we're still over an hour out. Still out here where everything looks the same."

Krycek reached for the seat knob--electric, thank goodness--and pulled on it. Gradually the seat back rose behind him and the landscape came into view. She was right. For as far as you could see it was flat, with low still-green vegetation, a ribbon of road running down the middle and a shadowed hint of mountains toward the southwest.

"How are you doing?" she said.

He glanced over at her. "Better than I was in the truck with that kid."

"You've done a lot of traveling. Where did you come from?"

"Kentucky. Okay, D.C. the day before that."

"And the injury? Where did you get it?"

"D.C."

Carrie opened her mouth and then closed it again. She bit her lip.

"What?" he said.

He watched as her mouth opened, paused and closed before she finally spoke.

"All this time I've remembered what you said in that letter you sent. About cutting any ties I had with Davies. It made me realize that, for all his charm, I knew nothing about him, or the circumstances behind the two of you showing up. Every once in a while I think about that and speculate about his circumstances"--she glanced at him--"you know, some sort of spy, or mob dealings, or being the minion of a rogue scientist." She shrugged. "It made me realize I don't know anything about you, either. In a conventional sense. Except that you cared enough to send me that warning. And that you and I worked through some pretty intense stuff together for a couple of weeks there."

He pushed out a breath and looked up at the ceiling. "It was crazy."

"But I thought about that after you called, how it's possible not to really know much about someone in the conventional sense, but how intense experience over a short period brings a different kind of concentrated knowledge, as if... I guess as if all you'd seen of a person was his hand, but you'd worked with that hand and knew every whorl and scar there, every line, and how the hand responds to all sorts of stimuli." She paused. "Does that make any sense?"

"Yeah." He nodded.

He thought of Andrei after he'd lost the arm, working so hard to keep him headed forward. Showing up on Marita's doorstep in Mallorca the Christmas before last because who else would understand the things he was going through, the pressures on him? Everything about his collaboration with Marita had been intense and concentrated. Hell, it had even been like that with Mulder for a few hours there, riding the truck to the Tunguska camp together, digging under the razor wire, hitting the dirt once they'd seen the men, taking off together...

And Tracy. Three weeks of hell and paradise.

He swallowed.

"Sandwich for your thoughts," Carrie said.

He looked over at her.

"You fell asleep almost as soon as we left Sterling. You should eat something. When was the last time you ate?"

"Bought a coffee and danish at a stop we made about seven this morning."

"I brought sandwiches. If you recline the seat you should be able to reach them.  Hope tuna's okay."

"Anything as long as it's not peanut butter. Had enough of that the last few days."

He let the seat back down and managed to reach the cooler and its contents.

"You want anything?" he asked.

"Maybe the carrot sticks."

He grabbed the bag of carrot sticks and a sandwich and raised the seat halfway. It was a nice sandwich, carefully made with soft whole grain bread. Carrot curls and alfalfa sprouts showed on the sides. He worked the plastic bag down off the top half of the sandwich and took a bite. It was good. Maybe he'd actually feel a little better if he got something into his stomach.

"I've thought about you and Tyler every once in a while," he said when his sandwich was half-gone. "Not much good stuff in my background growing up, so it really stood out, the way you two work like a team. It's pretty amazing." He paused. "Or maybe that's shifted now that he's a teenager."

"He'll be starting high school in the fall.  I can hardly believe it."

"So how's he doing?"

"Great. He's doing great. He played soccer for his school this year..."

Her voice trailed off. Krycek glanced over at her. Her jaw was set and her eyes were starting to look watery. She blinked.

He waited, watching her throat work. 

"He wants to be an architect," she said finally. "You remember the little town he built?"

"Yeah. It was pretty impressive."

"His dad's an architect. They'd been talking for a while, Ron and Tyler, and Ron came up with this plan for Tyler to live with him for a few years, introduce him to the field, see if it's what he really wants." She sucked in a breath, held it briefly and let it out in a long sigh.

"So where is he?"

"San Francisco."

He winced. "How long has he been gone?"

"Since September." Her voice went dry. "And I can't tell you how much I miss him."

Krycek stared out at the double yellow line in front of them. No matter how much of it the car seemed to swallow, it still stretched out in front of them forever.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Lexington, Kentucky**  
1:49 p.m.

Mulder's fingers tapped impatiently against the armrest as the plane taxied toward the terminal. With layovers and delays--not to mention an intermediate stop in Detroit--Detroit--what could have been an hour-and-a-half trip had taken the better part of four hours. And now he'd have to rent a car or find a taxi to get himself from here to Owensburg. If today's luck held, he'd spend the whole time with this morning's image in his head: of Scully walking toward the boarding gate with her new temporary partner, a short guy and snappy dresser who made liberal use of hair cream and cologne.

Mulder set his jaw, then closed his eyes, hoping to lose some of the tension. He could feel the plane's wheels rolling along, then the brakes slowly being applied. Finally they came to a halt. His seatmate got up and Mulder was jostled by various body parts as passengers crowded in to access the overhead compartments. Probably better that Scully wasn't here; at this point, he wouldn't make a very pleasant traveling companion.

He waited to open his eyes until most of the plane had emptied, then pulled his small bag from under the seat, made his way to the front of the cabin and down the corridor into the terminal, his mind still tangled in the day's negatives.

"Hey, Ben!"

He looked up, startled to see Sandy Miller standing beside the walkway.

A smile spread across his face. "My favorite agent-in-training. What are you doing here?"

Sandy rolled her eyes. "Annie called. She said it might make things easier for you if somebody picked you up. Rita and Bethy are up at Barkers' watching Adrie for me." She gestured toward his hand. "How's the injury?"

"Getting tired of this," he said. "It feels like wearing a mitt. I want my hand back."

"I hear ya." She paused. "You know, I'm really glad you guys are back. There's been some weird things going on around here."

"What do you mean?"

Her voice lowered. "Well, I know about Tracy disappearing, for one thing. I mean, I asked Dr. Tim about what kind of"--she shrugged--"you know, arrangements they were making for her, and he told me her body was gone."

Mulder's mouth opened.

"Don't worry; it's not all over town or anything. He just told me because I'd been there in the hospital with her. I promised I wouldn't mention it to anyone. Except you and Annie, 'cause you two already know about it." She paused. "Who would do that, Ben? Take a girl's body and leave another in its place?"

"That's the mystery," he said. "Scully and I have seen things like this before. Not body snatching, but people who have been used by mystery groups for"--he searched for a suitable word, one that wouldn't sound crazy--"genetic experiments."

"They did that to Tracy?"

He nodded. "We're pretty sure they did something to her, but we've lost our evidence now. And her baby--there's a good chance they implanted it in her. Scully--Annie--was going to examine the fetus, but it's gone, too.  Speaking of which, when you left the hospital the other day, did you notice anyone in the hallway, a man sitting on the bench outside the room next to Tracy's?"

Sandy shook her head. "Truly, I don't think I was noticing anything at that point. I was on overload." She jabbed the toe of her shoe against the carpet, then looked up. "By the way, have you found out anything about _him_?  You know--Alex?"

"There's no record of anything we can trace.  Bolting the way he did, he would have had to hitch a ride, or maybe hide in a truck. Have there been any stolen vehicles reported?"

Sandy shook her head.

"He didn't have a weapon, so he couldn't have hijacked a vehicle. He might have started out hitchhiking and switched to a bus later; they don't have passenger manifests. He's going to want to keep a low profile." He shrugged. "In any event, he was winging it. He was completely unprepared. He even took off without the pain pills he'd been taking, and the laptop my mother gave him, he left in--"

Oh.

Shit.

Sandy was frowning now. Mulder could feel his cheeks heating.

"In Scully's van," he finished, his tongue careful around the words, as if they were rigged to explode. He looked up, closed his eyes momentarily, then refocused on her. "Look, Sandy, there's something I need to explain here. It's not what I'd like to have to tell you; hell, I'd love it if it weren't true. But I wouldn't want you to find out later that I lied to you just to get around this."

Sandy sighed. "Well, it can't be much weirder than what he did before he took off."

Now it was Mulder's turn to look puzzled.

"He left a letter in my mailbox. And something else you'll have to see for yourself."

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Barr Lake State Park**  
Interstate 76, Colorado  
2:09 p.m.

Krycek clenched his teeth against the pain.

They were in a dusty parking lot beside a lake, but Carrie'd said it was the last easy place to stop before they hit the populated area. "Easy" meaning places they weren't likely to draw unwanted attention, and conveniently, except for their car, the parking lot was vacant.

Carrie'd wanted to stop and change the bandage again. Every bit of bacteria she could take away on the bandaging was something that wasn't going to end up in his blood stream, she said. He glanced toward her now. A deep line creased her forehead.

"Alex, I'd planned to drop you at home first, but we're running a little late, and frankly I don't want to wait on this. I'm going to drop you off with a colleague of mine. He can take some blood and run a few tests. We want to make sure we're not racing the clock on this."

"It's that bad?"

"The wound itself isn't that problematic. It's the infection I'm worried about, especially given the amount of time you weren't able to bathe or treat this."

He frowned. "I can wait until you finish giving your final."

"I'm not sure you can. I really can't take that chance."

"Look, someone's out there looking for me. I don't think they've had any way to trace me so far, but, you know, some guy with one arm and a gunshot wound's going to be hard to forget."

"We could be talking about your life here, Alex. Now, it's not common for sepsis to develop from gunshot wounds, but it's possible, and the conditions you've been in..." She let out a sigh. Her hand came to rest against his arm. "I lost a patient once from sepsis. It seemed to come out of nowhere and within a few hours he was beyond anything we could do to help him." She set her jaw and paused. "And I'm not in the mood to lose anyone else." She paused, shrugged and attempted a smile. "Make sense?"

"Yeah, I just--"

"Nelson's reliable. We're holding a few secrets for each other as it is. If I ask him to keep this quiet, I know he will."

She squeezed gently against his arm. "Deal? You know I'm going to do the very best I can for you."

He nodded and stared at the ceiling.

Gravel crunched on the access road beyond the parking lot.

"Looks like it's time for us to leave," Carrie said, taping a new bandage into place and quickly gathering up her supplies.

Krycek waited to hear the slam of the car's trunk. A couple of beats later Carrie's head appeared in the driver's window. "I'm going to make a quick pit stop.  Be back in a minute."

Krycek lay where he was, unable to form a response.

So that's where this could be headed. He'd expected the end so many times, either looking ahead realistically at his life and prospects or suddenly, when something had happened.  But this--it just seemed pathetic.  After everything, after getting rid of the old man, after connecting with his mother--no, working with her; Carrie was right about those concentrated experiences. Now, with Mulder finally knowing about the two of them, after carrying the knowledge for a lifetime by himself; after losing Tracy...

After her having given them a new lead on the invasion preparations... To come to this, to just sicken and die, not even having looked into the possibility this group held...

Carrie's head appeared above the window ledge, approaching.  Then she was opening the door, getting in, fastening her seat belt. She settled herself and looked into the rear view mirror.

He turned away. The car ignition cranked and the engine roared to life. There was the 'thunk' of the parking brake being released and the sound of gravel crunching under the tires as they made their way to the road.

Krycek closed his eyes. "You end up with a dead body on your hands, you're going to have some explaining to do."

"I could say I found you on the side of the road, " she said. "Who's going to prove I didn't?" A pause. "Besides, I'm not giving up on you. If that's what you think, you've got another thing coming."

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**In flight over Pennslyvania**  
2:11 p.m.

"They're going to find the body, you know," the thin man said over the low roar of the plane's engines. He glanced out at a bank of gray clouds on the horizon.

"There's nothing that can tie her to us," his broad companion replied, his voice dry and monotone. "Even if they trace the rented vehicle to the airport, the plane is our own. The driver was ours. Details of the flight plan have been altered." He reached forward to spear a piece of fruit from the gold-rimmed bowl on the table between them. "We're better off without anyone associated with Spender. We know now that he volunteered to oversee the shipments of beryllium because he had a side project going there. There's no telling whether anyone associated with him can truly be trusted, either." He paused and set his fork down. "Perhaps discovering the body will also act as a deterrent."

"To whom?"

"To Fox Mulder, for one. We don't know how invested he may be in the matter of Dr. Vanek at this point. Every man has his limits. Perhaps the thought of Agent Scully ending up like Ms. Fowley will be enough to make him step back."

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Owensburg, Kentucky**  
3:27 p.m.

Mulder paced the garden path of the Owensburg hospital, hands clenched. Sandy's final "strange thing" mention on the way here had been the discovery of a body on the side of the road outside town a few hours earlier--the body of the FBI agent who'd been arrested for attempting to abduct Tracy. There was no way Sandy could have known what this particular piece of information might mean to him, aside from the fact that his "What?" in response to her announcement had been so loud she'd immediately slammed on the brakes and pulled to the side of the road.

He'd covered for himself with a vague excuse-cum-explanation and had her bring him directly here, a place beginning to embed itself in his mind as an emblem of Very Bad Things. Evidently there was no morgue in town; all bodies were stored here until claimed, shipped or otherwise disposed of.

Scully and Acosta had been here to investigate and identify the body when he arrived. Scully'd caught his arm gently and said simply, "Mulder, you don't want to see this." Which meant things were bad--messy--and now his imagination, active as always, had been left to conjure up just what that messiness might look like. Acosta, for his part, obviously didn't have Will Wilkins' sense of adventure when it came to corpses, because he'd quickly excused himself to go examine Vanek's office at the plant.

Mulder made one last circuit of the garden pathway, past blooming roses and some tall spiky things in purples and yellows, and returned to the hallway inside, dropping into a chair, his head coming to rest in his hands.

Diana had been a spy, duplicitous far beyond anything Krycek had ever been, luring him in, pretending she loved him, that she was invested in his goals. That his insecurities and his aspirations were safe with her. And yet to come to an end like this, having Smoky's buddies spring her from the local jail only to drive her ten minutes down the road and put a bullet in her head... For as much as part of him insisted she deserved it, another part of him refused to believe it was the end anyone deserved.

"Ben Wallace?"

Mulder looked up to see Dr. Wykoff approaching. It was better, actually, if people kept calling him Ben here. That way if Smoky's shadow-group sent anyone else around looking for information, his name wasn't as likely to come up.

"How's the hand coming along?" Wykoff asked when he'd reached Mulder's position.

Mulder shrugged. "Okay, I guess. Though I'll be glad to get this stuff off and be able to use it again."

"You had questions for me?"

"Yeah." Mulder stood. "The cameras in the hallways here--do they keep the tapes? There was a guy sitting on the bench the other day, after the fire alarm went off; he seemed strange. Or familiar. Maybe both. I'd like to see Tuesday's tapes if I can."

"Sure, I'll fix you up." Dr. Wykoff gestured toward the office, and the two began to walk. "Too bad we don't have a video feed where the refrigerators are. Then we'd know something about how Tracy's body disappeared." He paused by the office door. "But I do have one bit of good news for you.  They just recently installed cameras in the lab where we sent your samples, and there's a woman on their tape that we can't place.  Could be your thief."

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**5:09 p.m.**

R-Eighteen spooned another mouthful of baby food into the patient's mouth. They'd had to let her come around enough that she could swallow; to have gone to all this trouble and then lose her through carelessness would be counterproductive at the very least. And D-Four was invested in this one for reasons beyond the scope of her own ability to comprehend.

One final bite. She scraped the last of the food out of the corners of the little jar and held it out. Instinctively, the patient reached toward the spoon and took it in. Eighteen wiped the corners of the female's mouth with a washcloth and stood up.

"Four? She's ready for you."

There was no answer. Setting the empty jar on the dresser, Eighteen left the room in search of her partner.

In the bed, the patient lay glassy-eyed. She waited, as if listening. Then a hand inched from under the quilt and reached unsteadily toward the curtain in the window. Her fingers searched out the warmth coming through the glass. Two fingers pressed against the pane, then skimmed the soft lower edge of the curtain.

"... the best we could," came Four's voice.

"I only hope Ninteen's sacrifice proves to be justified," the woman said as she paused in the doorway to the small room. "She was the last R."

"Except for you," his voice came quietly. "Now you remain as their legacy."

He moved past her into the room and sat on the chair beside the bed. The patient was exactly as they had left her, nothing more than a head protruding from the broad, patterned expanse of quilt. He reached out his hand, holding it above the smooth head, and kept it there until the patient's eyes fell shut.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Longmont, Colorado**  
8:19 p.m.

"Thank you so much. Nelson. You're a gem."

Carrie hung up the phone and let her shoulders loosen. Nelson Matapang's voice had never seemed so welcome.

She was investing in this patient, the analytical voice in her head noted now. Ever since she'd begun seeing a therapist, less than a month after her son had left for San Francisco, the voice had followed her around like a disembodied researcher with a clipboard. Sometimes it was unnerving. In this case, the message was true; she _was_ investing. But regardless, the news was good. It was an overwhelming relief to know that her fears about Alex's condition had gone unconfirmed. Now, the right doses of antibiotics should do the rest of the work.

The physical work, at least. Perhaps there was more in play here than just the need for physical rebuilding. The fact that he'd been shot--and shot twice, a detail he'd revealed only at the last minute, before she'd handed him over to Nelson--pointed to a mysterious, risky sort of life. To say nothing of the loss of his arm, or the circumstances under which he'd come to her, obviously on the run from someone.

Possibly running from inner burdens as well. She knew the territory well enough, the surprising weight of them.

Carrie set the phone on its base and wandered to the window. They'd arrived here around six, she'd fixed him something to eat and let him get settled in the guest bedroom, but eventually he'd come out again, saying he'd spent far too much time in enclosed spaces recently, not moving. He'd gone into Tyler's room and spent a few minutes examining Ty's model town, which was still laid out on its display table.

Then he'd wanted to go outside. In spite of the nausea he was starting to feel from the meds, he wanted to walk, to stretch his legs. Through his window, he'd noticed the vegetable garden in back and asked about it. She'd put in the two raised beds years ago, in the hopes of cementing Tyler's love for good, healthy food, and it had worked. They'd grown the garden every year since, a few beans and tomatoes and peas and squash. Potatoes and carrots. But after Ty left in the fall, she'd been unable to bring herself even to take out the dead plants.

Carrie gave a mental push to her shadow-therapist and started down the stairs to the rec room. At the sliding glass door to the yard, she paused. Alex was standing by the garden beds, fingering a leaf on the trellis, still hung with the tan, papery skeletons of last year's English pea crop. After a moment he let the leaf go and sat down on the edge of the bed. He leaned forward, head in hand. In the dusky light, she could see the muscles in his back tremble.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**8:25 p.m.**

R-Eighteen stood by the window in the small room. The sun was beginning to melt into the neighboring rooftops to the west.  From the other side of the tiny house, she'd been able to stand on the porch and make out the nearly-full moon, camouflaged by the blue of the sky. On this side, the evening light had tinted the lace curtains a warm yellow-gold. Pushing them aside, she tugged on the lower half of the old window until it finally began to give. Lifting, she pushed it up all the way. Fresh air spilled in. In the overgrown yard beyond, tall weeds threw shadows against the glass in the window beside the bed. She watched them sway slightly in the slow-moving air, then pulled the curtains together. It was critical to keep out prying eyes.

The last of her kind. Until Four had said it, it had almost been possible not to face the fact.

The instinct to move always forward--to establish, to build, to prepare--had been bred into her kind long ago, but being the last... It was almost incomprehensible. When your life's motivation had centered around the purpose of the group--to make their future better, to reach toward the common goal--what did you do when there were no more of you, when the reason that had fueled your vision was gone?

True, most of the other Rs had been gone four years now. But there had been R-Six, until she'd been caught.  And up until two days ago, she'd had Nineteen, a comfort in her familiarity. She could have made the sacrifice herself, but Nineteen had insisted. As the one of lower rank, it was her duty.

Though sacrificing herself would have spared her this hollow feeling, this strange emptiness.

A sudden groan came from the bed, the female trying to speak, yet unable, turning her head, reaching--

"Four!"

But Four wasn't here. He'd taken the car and gone for supplies.

Carefully she approached the bed and sat on the edge. She lacked the higher skills Four had.

"You're not alone," she said, addressing the female.

The moaning had stopped now, but the restlessness under the quilt continued. Eighteen reached out a hand and smoothed it tentatively over the female's shoulder and down her arm.

"You're not alone," she repeated. The words seemed to echo back at her, laughing.

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Owensburg, Kentucky**  
9:14 p.m.

"Gotta talk to Angie Connors tomorrow," Mulder said. He could hear Scully's heartbeat under his ear. He smiled momentarily.

"Have you called her?" Thin fingers smoothed through his hair.

"Yeah. From the hospital this afternoon. Told her the basics--that someone could be out looking for the kids, so to keep a good eye on them."

"What a nightmare message for any mother to receive."

"I know. I told her it wasn't certain, just a precaution, that there was no reason for anyone to suspect that the three test subjects were even related. Just a heads-up." He paused and shifted against her. "Maybe she can take the super-vigilance she's been focusing on their diet and switch it to their surroundings." He looked up at her. "They've been after her for donuts now."

"Kids," she said, and smiled. "Seriously, though, Mulder, Manny hasn't been able to find any references so far to the Connors children. Or anything at all having to do with her research. Dr. Vanek was extremely secretive. I'm guessing she took every last bit of documentation with her."

"Which should work to everyone's advantage now... except for anyone wanting to know what exactly that research entailed." A pause. "You've got those records the Gunmen copied from Smoky's drop at the airport in Baltimore, though."

"True," she said. "He could have more of them somewhere. Possibly in that house in Reston."

"Mm, probably not.  At least, not now. Smoky's pals will have turned the place upside down looking for whatever they can find."

"Maybe he kept them somewhere else. I wonder where he lived. Who would know?"

"Krycek might."

"True." She turned toward him. His head slipped onto the mattress. "I wonder whether he made it to wherever he was going. I've been thinking about that--what could happen to a wound that was never properly treated."

"He didn't have to take off."

She gave him a look. "If you were Krycek, what would you have done?"

He shrugged. "Gotten the hell out of there."

"He may be our only way to find out about this Pasadena group, Mulder. Or your sister."

"You know, I keep thinking about that--whether he actually meant it when he said he'd help me find out what happened to Samantha. It makes a good line."

"How did he say it? Was it the cocky way he is sometimes?" She lowered her voice and attempted an imitation. "I can get you the men behind this, Mulder."

He shook his head. "Maybe wondering about Krycek's just a way for me not to think about Diana."

For a moment the room was silent.

"I can understand how it would be hard for you to sort out those feelings," she said finally. "I can't imagine--"

"Mainly I just keep picturing all sorts of ways she could have ended up." He forced a smile. "The curse of having an active imagination, I guess."

"Are you asking for details?"

"I guess just the basics."

"She was shot through the right temple, Mulder. It blew off a small section of her skull."

"I think that's enough right there."

"She also had a sprained ankle. I think she must have tripped getting out of the car."

Scully glanced at the window, where twilight had colored the sky in streaks of orange and pink. Mulder rolled away from her. She traced the contours of his back with her gaze, wondering whether to offer space or comfort. His head came up and he pushed the pillow farther under his head.

"It was nice of Dale to let us stay here," she ventured.

"Like he said, we've only been gone a couple of days. He hasn't even had time to change the sheets." He paused. "Do you think your"--he turned toward her now and made air quotes--" 'partner' will notice you're not in your room at the motel?"

"Not as long as I'm there in the morning at 7:30 sharp."

"How's it working out with him?"

"I hadn't noticed what a non-skeptic I've become," she said, setting a hand tentatively on his hip. He took it and pulled it around his middle. She scooted closer, until they were spooned together."There were so many things I was tempted to mention that I know he wouldn't have any comprehension of."

"Welcome to the world of the fringe," he said. "I've spent my whole life here."

Scully looked up at the shadows on the ceiling. "What are you doing tomorrow, Mulder?"

"Going over the hospital security tapes. Then I need to talk with Rita and Sandy. She's got something she wants to show me." He paused. "Most of all, I'm going to try to figure out something about this--"

He reached for the bedside lamp and turned it on, then took a photograph from the top of the nightstand. He turned to her.

"You know, when Wykoff said it was a brown-haired woman the camera caught in the lab, my immediate thought was that it was Diana. I kept wondering what the hell Diana could have wanted with Tracy's samples." He shook his head and passed the picture to her. "I never could have imagined this."

Scully held the image toward the light. In it, a woman with brown, curly hair was passing the camera, caught just as she glanced toward it with worried eyes. She'd seen this woman--or one just like her--in a moment of hellish tension that she preferred not to remember, four years earlier in the middle of a Maryland bridge.

It was one of the clones of Mulder's sister.


	3. Chapter 3

**Friday, 28 May 1999**   
**Longmont, Colorado**   
**3:15 a.m.**

"Alex, would you like a drink of water?"

She'd woken to the sound of him throwing up in the bathroom, but waited until she heard him return to bed before approaching the door.

"Yeah." The voice that replied was clipped and dry. "Thanks."

Carrie went to the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of water and returned to the shadowed room, navigating by the night light on the wall.

"How bad is it?" she asked, transferring the bottle to the hot hand in the shadows. "It's worse at first, but it should lessen after a while. Anyway, I want to keep a close eye on your meds and how they're interacting."

"Appreciate it."

A pause.

"Couple of weeks ago," he went on, "they switched pain meds on me and I ended up in intensive care. Said I would have died if someone hadn't been there with me and done some fast thinking."

Carrie winced. "Well, thank goodness for that person. Wow, you know the more you tell me, the more it seems that part of what you need is a really good rest, a chance to fully recover."

No answer came from the bed.

"Sweaty?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"Here, just a minute."

She went to the bathroom and returned with a warm, damp cloth and a towel, which she handed to him.

"How long you think this will take?" he said.

"Recovery?"

"Yeah."

"I don't know. Given everything you've gone through, three or four weeks.  _If_  you take it easy, and don't push yourself. Let your body repair itself."

A sharp breath was pushed out in the darkness. "Got stuff I need to do."

"You won't get very far if you go before you've actually healed. Look what happened this time."

"Yeah, I guess." There was a long pause. "Look, I didn't mean to come here and dump myself on your doorstep. Don't want to mess up your life, or your routine, or whatever."

"Full confession? This is a welcome break from what my... routine... has become."

"Living here by yourself?"

"Uh-huh. Partly. I think I invested myself a lot more than I realized in being a mom."

"Can't be a bad thing."

"Well, I'm beginning to wonder."

Silence.

"How are you dealing?" he said finally.

She shook her head and let the night light on the far wall go out of focus. "Not well, I'm afraid." Which was an understatement, but this wasn't the time to get into the dreary story of her own life. "Here, I should check your vitals before you start getting drowsy."

"What, you don't want to be like those people in the hospital who wake you up right after you've finally gotten to sleep?" Surprisingly, there was humor in his voice--a good sign.

"No," she said, smiling. "I get my jollies from prescribing therapy patients don't like. Arm?"

He held it out. She found his pulse and watched the clock.

"Sova," he said absently when she'd finished and let his arm go.

"What?"

"Uh, owl. There's this type of owl where I grew up. The females--up in the trees they look like old babushkas wearing shawls, but they'll swoop right down and whack you on the head if you get anywhere near their young. They actually punch with their talons. Pretty impressive."

"And this was where?"

No reply.

Perhaps she'd overstepped.

"Russia," he said finally. "In the Urals, outside Sverdlovsk."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Owensburg, Kentucky  
4:48 a.m.**

_To: topaz@rift.net_   
_From: spooky@quick.net_   
_Don't know if you've got an internet connection, but in case you do, a question: Do you know anything about groups of clones whose objective was to create hybrids to breed out their sameness so they could blend in with the human population and just live their lives? Four years ago I encountered two groups, one of middle-aged men and another group supposedly cloned from Samantha, but adults. At the time, they were being hunted down by an enforcer--an alien bounty hunter--and I thought all of them were killed. They seemed to be separate from the project and any goals it may have had. Maybe breakaway groups._

_The reason I'm asking: The hospital test samples taken from Tracy have disappeared from the lab they were delivered to. Security footage shows one unidentified individual, a woman who looks exactly like the clones I saw of Samantha. I'm at a loss to figure out how these pieces could fit together, what her stake in this could possibly be. If you have input, I'd appreciate hearing it._

Mulder paused and took his fingers from the keyboard. Should he tell Krycek that Tracy's body had disappeared, too? Or would that be too much to dump on him? How would it hit him if Scully died and he found out her body had disappeared?

On the other hand, if her body disappeared and no one bothered to let him know, he'd be ready to tear someone limb from limb once he found out. Besides, pissing Krycek off could mean the end of a critical source of information.

_Probably not what you want or need to hear at this point, but Tracy's body was also discovered missing Wednesday morning. All I can figure is that whoever tampered with her is trying to clean up any evidence of whatever it is they've done. I do remember one man who caught my eye while we were all there the other day--older guy sitting in the hallway next to the adjoining room--and I'm supposed to be reviewing the hospital tapes later today. Will let you know if I find anything._

_P.S. I packed up..._

Mulder's fingers hesitated, poised above the keyboard. But he was going to have to face the fact, whether he wanted it to be true or not. And no doubt the nuance of his wording would speak loudly to Krycek. He took a deep breath and continued.

_... Mom's laptop and sent it back to her. In case you need to contact her, she should have that capability in a couple of days._

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

 **Cave Creek Lodge Motel**  
 **Owensburg, Kentucky**  
 **7:27 a.m**.

A crisp knock came on Scully's door.

"Just a minute." She hopped on one foot, slipping on the second shoe.

She was right to have come here a few minutes early. Manny was a stickler for promptness. Shoe on, she composed herself and reached for the door.

"Hi."

"Ready to head out? There's a place Will and I like to grab coffee about a block away. Then we can head over to the plant."

"Coffee sounds good," she said.

Scully gathered her things, locked the door to her room and went out to the car.

"I don't get this hush-hush game we're playing," Manny said as they pulled out onto the street. "Skinner wants two reports, one of them sanitized with any references to details of Vanek's project or the Connors kids removed, and the other one with the full scoop handed directly to him."

Scully pursed her lips. "There are people--criminals--looking for this information. They've got extensive contacts within the Bureau."

"So these 'contacts', whoever they are, are sitting around reading through all the reports we file?" He rolled his eyes. "Sounds like paranoia."

"I thought so, too, once," Scully said. "But over the years Mulder and I have had reports disappear, evidence... There's been undue influence exerted. There's the possibility there could be less of it now, after the death of a man who was certainly central to their organization--"

"You mean that guy Will was talking about? Spender?"

"Yes."

Manny pulled into the parking lot of a strip mall. 

Inside, Daily's was crowded. Either it was popular by reputation or it was simply one of the few options available in this small town. Scully glanced around as they stood in line. Suddenly her eye caught on a brown-haired woman sitting at a table against the wall: Raylene Belfontaine, Sandy Miller's mother. Raylene saw her at the same moment. Her eyes widened in recognition and she started to wave, but quickly--thankfully--slipped her hand down to her lap. After a brief guilty look, she turned away.

Scully breathed a sigh of relief. At least, having spent her previous time in Owensburg hidden away at the Barkers', these people wouldn't know her as anything other than an investigator.

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Longmont, Colorado  
7:54 a.m.**

"Thanks," Krycek said as he handed Carrie his empty plate.

"I'll pick up some yogurt when I'm out. It'll help replenish your good bacteria that the meds are killing off. Should help you feel better, too."

He looked up at her. "I could use that."

"Well, in the meantime, the recliner is at your disposal." She turned and went in the direction of the kitchen.

Krycek looked out at the trees beyond the window. Luckily, the room faced the side of the property, and there were enough trees and bushes between here and the next house to make it unlikely that anyone would spot a new, if temporary, addition to Carrie's household.

Three or four weeks, she'd said.

If he laid off completely and just rested.

How that could possibly play out, given the things he needed to get done, and the oversize load of chaos in his head, there was no telling. But she had a point about trying to go on in this condition. Tracy would have told him to take advantage of the offer, to take the time to regain his strength.

It was going to be a bitch, though. He had someone to help him when he needed it, true. But there was a difference this time, a gaping hole somewhere in his defenses, like the jagged opening left after you'd blown a hole in a wall.

Footsteps approached from the next room. He turned. Carrie had her jacket on.

"Anything you can think of that you need, Alex?"

"I'm going to need to pick up a laptop as soon as I can get myself to a store," he said.

"You can use my computer."

He closed his eyes briefly. "Maybe for now. I don't want to send anything through it that could be traced back here. To you," he added, looking up at her. "But this guy I need to contact, I can connect with him through a message board online. Should be safe enough... for a day or two, anyway."

"I'll turn it on for you and sign in. Then I'm going to take off. I'll be back around 11:30." She gave him a knowing smile. "It should give you some time to yourself, without anybody hovering over you."

"Appreciate it, thanks."

He listened to her footsteps retreat. A minute later the door to the garage stairwell opened and then shut again. He closed his eyes. Hopefully the silence wouldn't bring images of the hospital. Or of Andrei swinging from that damned cord. Or of the curly-haired kid.

A strength, Tracy'd said. She'd seemed indignant, or strong, or something, when she said it, when they were together in the dream: that the strength you gained from knowing someone didn't just melt away when they weren't around. You still had it. Why wouldn't you?

It had made sense at the time.

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**8:15 a.m.**

Four looked out the many-paned window at the end of the kitchen counter. Eighteen was sitting outside on the tiny porch, her form and color a contrast to the weathered gray of the wood. A shawl was wrapped around her against the morning's chill. He went to the door and opened it.

"What is it, Eighteen?"

"I'm trying to enjoy the morning. It's one of the things we came here for, after all."

"It's supposed to get warm later. 80 degrees," he said, and hesitated. She hadn't looked up at him. "What is it?" he asked again.

She turned now. "It's curious--hard--to exchange one purpose for another."

"There's no question." He sat down on the cane-seated chair in the corner. There was barely enough room for the two of them in the small space. "You know, it was no easier for me to watch Eight perform the sacrifice than for you to lose R-Nineteen."

"But there are still more of your kind. More Ds."

"Yes, but only two others who have taken this new path, and they're each a thousand miles or more away, busy in the work." He shrugged. "Forging a new path makes us, essentially, a new and separate kind."

"I'd never felt alone until now," she said. "Foreign, yes, but not alone, in spite of being light years from the origin point." She turned to him again. "Has the story been floated?"

"Yes. The site contains the residue of Eight and Nineteen, and hair from the female. Also, the marks of an enforcer. They'll assume he killed them and took the female's body."

"And when they find these things, we should be safe?"

"There are no guarantees. We'll always have to be cautious. But we'll be free to move on."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Owensburg General Hospital**   
**Owensburg, Kentucky**   
**8:45 a.m.**

The door to the small room opened and Sandy slipped inside.

Mulder looked up from the monitor and brightened. "Hey, thanks for coming. You're off the hook with the Barkers?"

"Well, for as long as this takes, anyway. Rita and Bethy are up there again, watching Adrie. Bethy's good with him."

"I think Bethy would be good with anyone," Mulder said. "One night last week when I couldn't sleep, she came out and found me in the living room in the dark. Didn't say a word, just sat down next to me on the couch and spread her blanket across both of us. It was"--he searched for the right word--"peaceful, as if we both had exactly what we needed even though neither of us said a thing."

"She's been carrying that book around the last couple of days--that one of Tracy's. I saw what he wrote in it." She sighed. "Man, I just do not  _get_  this guy."

"You're not the only one. He's fed me absolutely critical intel over the past week, and four days ago he saved Scully, my mom and me. But he also killed my father. He pretended to be my partner for a while, the whole time reporting to Smoky... One time he lured me off to Russia; I ended up in a prison camp. Who knows how long I would have rotted there if I hadn't managed to escape." He paused, then winced, remembering. "Nearly lost an arm to one of the locals."

"Is that what happened to him?"

Mulder shrugged. "I don't know. Never really thought about it. But yeah, that would make sense."

Sandy pulled something from her pocket and laid it on the table--a bank card. "He said it was Tracy's, that he figured she'd want me to have it. And that there's a couple thousand dollars in the account."

Mulder's forehead creased. He picked up the card, looked at it and turned it over.  Tracy's signature was on the back. "Hanson," he said. "I didn't know that was her name."

"I'm not sure I even want to use it," she said. "But do you think it's on the level?"

Mulder looked up at her. "No telling with Krycek." He bit his lip and paused. "But you know, Scully knows somebody who might be able to find something out for you. I'll ask her when I see her." He turned to the computer screen in front of him and pointed. "Now, this is what I wanted you to see. This guy. Does he ring any bells?"

Sandy pulled up a chair and looked carefully at the black-and-white freeze-frame of the hallway outside the room Tracy had been in. An older gentleman in a suit and tie sat on the bench. "I don't think so. Never seen him before." She shook her head. "Can you run it?"

Mulder pushed play. "He's there for at least 45 minutes after this point."

"There I go," she said, watching her image enter the screen, skip-frame across it and exit on the left. She sighed. "Takes you right back to Tuesday, don't it?"

"Yeah, it does." He sighed, then refocused on the man on the bench.

"Guy likes his stripes. The tie, I mean."

"Yeah, kind of loud." Mulder paused abruptly and pushed out a breath. "You know, that might be something."

"What?"

"The tie. I keep having this feeling I've seen this guy before. I mean, he doesn't look particularly familiar, and yet there's something about him that keeps sticking in my mind, like if I think hard enough, I'll be able to make the connection."

"You said you thought maybe he--or somebody--came here purposely to take Tracy's body, right?"

He shrugged.  "Somebody did take it."

"Well, if he did... or okay, anybody who might have done it... then that means they knew she was dying. That they were tracking her somehow."

"Watching her?"

Sandy shook her head. "No. You said maybe they actually were able to, you know, shut her down. So I was thinking more sci-fi, like... Like the way they track animals, by putting those radio tag thingies on 'em. Only something inside we wouldn't know how to detect."

"An implant."

"Yeah, I guess."

"We've seen those--people with implants. Even S--" He stopped himself before he could mention the one Scully carried at the base of her neck. Even for Sandy, that would be a lot to swallow. "So your point here is--"

"That if they knew what was happening, then maybe they were here earlier, waiting for it to happen. Have you looked at the video from the day before?"

One of Mulder's eyebrows rose. He shook a teasing finger at her. "You really should think about joining the Bureau." He got up before she could protest. "Back in a minute. I've got to see about Monday's tapes."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Longmont, Colorado  
10:05 a.m.**

Krycek switched off the computer screen and eased himself up from the chair. He'd caught Ché online--no big surprise there--and they'd been able to message in a private chat room, so he'd been able to reassure him that he'd managed to get here, that he was in good hands.

Slowly he made his way to the bathroom. The nausea wasn't as bad as last night, but the meds were still charging through his system like an army out to loot and pillage. He looked at himself in the mirror after he flushed the toilet, as he was washing his hands. No wonder Carrie'd told him three or four weeks.

What had he looked like traveling with Mona? He was probably damn lucky he'd ended up with her instead of somebody who might have gotten suspicious and called the cops on him at a rest stop, or insisted on taking him to the nearest hospital. Hopefully her mission to clear out the abusive boyfriend was working out. And Bobby'd gotten to see his trains.

In the doorway, he paused. Bed, or back to the recliner? He closed his eyes, listening to his body. Bed it was. For a while, anyway. Two doors down he turned in to his room and drifted to the window. Below, past a simple slab patio, were the two raised beds. He thought of the trip to Pennsylvania, of finding a tiny blooming sweet pea in the deep weeds and working it into the hair above Tracy's ear. He sucked in a breath and leaned against the window ledge. A subtle trembling ran through his arm and hand.

Finally he turned and went to the bed. He eased himself in and pulled up the covers. Closed his eyes.

Mulder'd written. Which was something. At least he hadn't gone right back to his old posturing. The fact that Tracy's body was gone only underlined the fact that this group, whoever they were, had been messing with her. Not only that, but they'd had some sort of homing device planted in her, and if they could know where she was, what else could they have known? Who she was with? What she was thinking? The prospects could be damn creepy, nothing like the simple homing beacons the consortium's abductees carried, that only served to call them to a gathering site. All the more reason to find out who these people--human or otherwise--were, and what they were up to.

Krycek curled onto his left side and pushed the pillow farther under his head. The hardest part of replying to Mulder had been trying to decide whether to suggest that he look at the Reston house tapes. There might be something there Mulder and Scully could use. At least they'd know whatever Darryl Silver did, and that in itself could help them stay one step ahead of the old men. But the tapes had been rolling the whole time they'd been there, recording every minute he'd spent with his mother, everything that had passed between them. Maybe it would just make Mulder mad at him again, for cutting in on his own territory. Beyond that, he wasn't sure he was ready to expose himself to Mulder like that, let him review the tension and the heart-drop moments like some movie critic working up a review. It was none of his damn business. None of anybody's damn business.

From the nightstand, the clock sent its sharp rhythm into the silence. The house was nice enough--comfortable enough--but still, there was this hollow feeling, the kind of emptiness he'd felt in Antarctica seven months earlier, waiting around for the old man to finish his business setting up the new craft and crew there, when he'd walk down to the shoreline and look out over the overwhelming, jagged landscape of rock, snow and blue-tinted floating ice, the eerie silence broken only by the occasional crash of falling ice.

As if he were the last man on earth.

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**10:15 a.m.**

Under the quilt, fingers stirred, slipped to the edge of the covers and inched tentatively upward. Warm air met them.

These small movements, when the man and woman weren't present, seemed to be the only safe ones. Any noticeable signs of consciousness brought the kindly man, but with him came the thick fog, sticky like cobwebs, that suspended all deliberate thought.

Not that consciousness itself was particularly welcoming. She didn't know this room, or the two people. She didn't know how she'd come here, or why. Or where and what she'd come from. She knew only what she could glimpse in the man's mind: travel through the countryside on a long highway, a blue car, the woman with brown, curly hair and large, sad eyes. And an image that repeated itself: a white hallway in a brightly-lit building, a bench, and on the other side, two people looking through a broad window into a room--a tall man and a short, red-haired woman.

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Owensburg General Hospital**   
**Owensburg, Kentucky**   
**12:15 p.m.**

"See, Scully?" Mulder pointed at the monitor with his lunch fork.

Scully leaned in closer. "He's wearing the same clothes as the man in the hallway outside Tracy's room." She frowned. "You know, Mulder, I noticed this man. It was late--very late. Dr. Wykoff asked me to come look at a slide he had, and as we passed the man, he seemed somehow familiar. But when I looked back, I realized I'd made a mistake."

"Maybe you didn't."

"But Mulder, I  _don't_  know him. Have you asked Mrs. Carter if anyone can identify this man? This town being as small as it is, someone must know who he is."

"Sandy didn't recognize him, so she asked Mrs. Carter. She said she noticed him the same evening you did. He didn't look familiar, so she introduced herself and asked if she could help him, and who he was there to see. He said his name was James Defore, and he'd come to see a man named Whitman who'd had a heart attack." He looked up at her. "So Sandy followed up with the Whitmans. They said they don't know anyone by that name."

Scully's brow furrowed. Her lips pressed together. "I... I don't know, Mulder. Do you have a theory? They're two different men."

"Are you ready for 'out there'?"

"I don't know. How 'out there' are you talking about?"

"Remember three years ago when we were looking into the shooting at that fast food restaurant?"

"Yes."

"When we were trying to figure out who the guy was who was supposed to have healed all those people, remember the TV station's footage?"

"Yes. We saw Jeremiah Smith. And then, just a frame later, it was someone else... dressed identically."

"Or maybe not somebody else. What happened when we picked Smith up at the Social Security Administration and tried to take him to the Bureau?"

"We got outside into the hallway, and he ran."

"Not quite. He piled into a group of people, and when I went to grab him--"

"He wasn't there."

"I grabbed for the suit--the clothes."

"What's your point?"

"The lab footage of the woman who looks like Samantha got me to thinking. She told me the enforcer--the bounty hunter who was after her--could disguise himself to look like anyone." He raised an eyebrow. "What if Smith has that ability, too? What if the man I grabbed  _was_ Smith, and crashing into those other people gave him just enough time to shift his appearance?"

"So you think this is Smith?"

"Or somebody like him. Scully, I know it's possible. I watched the bounty hunter's face morph on that submarine."

"Mulder, you were--" She stopped abruptly. Her lips came together. "Then what makes you think this man isn't one of these bounty hunters?"

"I guess it's possible. Except that the clone told me the bounty hunters want to eliminate all clones because they believe they're a dilution of their race. And if this clone--the woman--is working with our body thief, then it's not likely he's a bounty hunter."

One reddish eyebrow rose. "So if it was Smith who was here--or someone like him--then what would he want with Tracy's body? Wouldn't taking it imply that he's working for this group Krycek was talking about? I thought Jeremiah Smith wanted to help you." She paused. "He seemed like he did."

"I don't know. I haven't figured that out yet."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

_To: spooky@quick.net_   
_From: topaz@rift.net_   
_Sorry, don't know anything useful about your clones. I've heard rumors that a few have escaped here and there over the years, but I wasn't in a position to know the details. The higher-ups seemed to discount them, if anything, but it sounds like the one you spotted has something serious in mind. I'll give it some thought, in case it rings any more bells._

_No laptop here yet; doctor's got me on lockdown until I stop looking like the walking dead. In the meantime I'll be routing my mail through a trusted source for security._

_We need to find this group, and not just because it's personal. Whatever they've done is more organic, and potentially a lot more serious, than anything I've seen before. At some point I'll need to connect with Scully about the details of this child of hers she discovered in San Diego. Could be the same group behind it. I know it wasn't the old men. Could use your input on San Diego, too, if you were there._

_-A_

_P.S. The Reston house has video feeds in most rooms. If the Bureau's taken the tapes and they haven't disappeared from evidence, checking them out will let you know anything Darryl Silver would have told the group about you, so at least you'll know what they know, and if/why/how they might try to go after you._

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

_To: topaz@rift.net_   
_From: spooky@quick.net_   
_More news, and possibly stranger. Going over the hospital security tapes, I spotted the man I mentioned seeing in the hallway, and then found another guy on the previous night's tapes: different guy, exactly the same clothing, right down to the tie. Also found out Version #2 lied to the hospital administrator about what he was doing there. I'm thinking this might be a shapeshifter, but I've only seen one once, an enforcer/bounty hunter. Any experience with this?_

_#2: Do you know anything about a man named Jeremiah Smith? I ran across him two years ago. He did a couple of disappearing tricks that have me wondering whether this guy on the tape might be him, or somebody like him. One of the Samantha clones told me she'd never seen anyone but a bounty hunter able to shapeshift, but you never know._

_Will pass your message on to Scully. They've been going through Vanek's records at the plant but haven't found a single word about this vaccine project she had going. No help to us, but good for the kids she was using as guinea pigs. Without knowing who they are, Smoky's friends can't abduct them and take them apart to find out what she was doing._

Mulder's fingers paused and finally retreated from the keyboard. How ironic was it that he was writing this stuff about abducting children to the man who'd helped keep him off Skyland Mountain so they could capture Scully? Maybe he should be more cautious. Still, it was hard to get around what Krycek had done in Reston, and so far he seemed to be on the level and willing to keep offering information.

Mulder got up, went to Dale's picture window and looked out into the broad, sunny yard. Along the fence were the kinds of flowers Tracy had picked for the table.

After a moment he turned away and went to the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of water, drank it and set the glass in the sink. His eyes were drawn to the chair at the end of the table. It was where she'd been sitting when she collapsed. And Krycek had called, obviously shaken, wondering what had happened to her because somehow, in her own psychic way, she'd managed to get through to him in that moment of crisis.

He looked up, closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again and went back to the computer. Pulling the keyboard out, he started to type again.

_FYI, Diana Fowley is dead. While we were in Reston, Smoky sent her looking for Tracy but the locals were alerted and Diana was detained by law enforcement. Yesterday before we arrived here, somebody bailed her out, took her ten miles down the road and dumped her in a ditch with a bullet to the head. From the description we got (limo, two guys in trench coats, expensive-looking suits) it sounds like maybe it was your old associates._

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Longmont, Colorado  
3:25 p.m.**

Slowly, Krycek opened his eyes. The room was warm; sunlight was pouring onto the carpet through the south window. He glanced at the clock and blinked to make sure he was seeing it right. Middle of the afternoon. Everything was quiet.

Gradually the sensations of his body filled in: a mild nausea and achiness, the subtle gnawing of pain from the new wound. The need to get up and move in spite of it. Overall, things seemed a little better than the last time he was awake.

So far, anyway.

He rolled carefully to the edge of the bed and sat up. He wondered whether Mulder had gotten his e-mail. He was supposed to be checking the hospital video for the guy who'd stuck in his mind. Maybe he'd even written back by now. The thought made him want to check, but it was too soon to clutter his head with whatever was going on in Owensburg. He should give some time to the here-and-now.

He stood and reached for the robe Carrie had lent him. Mulder hadn't had a chance yet to ask him why he'd put the video feed in his old apartment. Maybe he hadn't stopped to think about it. And what would he answer if Mulder did ask?

On the way to the bathroom, he noticed Carrie in the living room, reading. On his way back, he stopped in the doorway.

She smiled when she saw him. "Welcome to the land of the living. You slept a long time, which is a good thing."

"Didn't even have any dreams." He shrugged. "At least, not any I can remember."

"That's good. It means you were sleeping deeply." She set aside her magazine. "If you're hungry, feel free to rummage around in the fridge. Or if you want something particular, just ask. I'd be glad to fix something for you."

"I'll take some of that yogurt, if you got it," he said. "I'm overdue on the pain meds."

"I did. Picked up five flavors. Take your pick."

"Thanks."

He went to the kitchen. The broad window above the sink and counter faced east. In the distance he could see the vast flatness they'd traveled the day before. He stood there for a moment, gazing out at it. It was like he'd wakened to an entirely different world, one devoid of the twists and shadows and weights of his own.

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**3:27 p.m.**

The room was very warm, but the window was open and a soft breeze lifted the lace curtains, making them float gently inward, as if they were riding waves.

The girl moved a foot carefully. Her legs were heavy, leaden, though it was possible to flex her fingers and toes, and to move her arms to some degree. She'd heard Four say that it would take weeks, maybe even longer, for her body to regenerate. From what, she wasn't sure yet. And the trick was to learn more, to put together the puzzle pieces of her situation without rousing Four's awareness, because as soon as he sensed her thinking, his hand would reach out above her head and the sticky fog would return.

He meant well. At least, he believed he did. But she had her own needs beyond the scope of Four's intentions. She was cared for; she was fed here. She wasn't in pain or in danger... as far as she could tell. But she was a question mark, a generic being with no history suspended in the strange, confining reality of this room. Somewhere, as if from beyond a wall, she could feel the small but steady insistence of an identity, like a heartbeat, wanting to be known.

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Longmont, Colorado  
3:45 p.m.**

Krycek paused in the doorway to the living room.

"Any chance I could sit out on the patio downstairs? Seems pretty nice out there."

"Sure." Carrie set her magazine aside. "I have some chairs, and a chaise lounge. I just haven't bothered to get them out yet. You going to be able to make it down the stairs okay?"

After a pause, he cleared his throat. "Yeah, I've been doing stairs. Just have to take my time."

Carrie went first, hesitating below the first few steps until she was satisfied that her patient was managing. Then she went ahead, down into the rec room, unlocked the sliding door and started to take out the chairs.

Krycek paused at the bottom of the stairs to look around. Foosball table, a couple of beanbag chairs. Basketball hoop. It had to be killing Carrie to look at those things. Or maybe she made it a point not to; maybe she didn't come down here. Maybe that's why she hadn't set out the patio furniture yet.

"Would you rather the chaise?" she asked when he stepped outside.

He nodded. "Yeah, I think so. I'll last longer in it. Soaking up some sun sounds good right now."

"Gives you vitamin D, too. They've done studies, you know."

He squinted against the brightness and went to the edge of the patio, looking toward one corner of the house and then the other. No neighboring windows in view--a good thing.

"Saw the foosball table in there," he said when she'd brought out the last of the chaise cushions. "Is Tyler coming home for the summer?"

"He was supposed to." She forced a dubious smile. "But there's some camp Ron wants him to go to. It won't leave much time afterward, before school starts again."

His mouth opened slightly. Finally he closed it. "What's Tyler want to do?"

She shrugged. "I'm not sure. He tells me wants to see me, but he sounds really interested in the camp, too. I'm not sure whether he's just trying to make me feel better by saying he wants to come here, or..." Another shrug. "No clue. I never thought it would get to the point where I couldn't read my own kid."

Krycek settled himself on the chaise lounge and put his feet up. Carrie went to one of the raised beds, sat on the edge and started to pull up the dried plants from last year.

He watched the set of her mouth, the way she worked, tighter at first, then gradually loosening. Still, there was another possibility behind the plans for summer camp. Not that it was his place to bring it up. But it was hard not to see the potential for it, given the kind of experience he'd had with a so-called father.

Or maybe he was just reading into the situation.

He closed his eyes and focused on the sun heating his skin, and let himself loosen in the welcome warmth.

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Owensburg, Kentucky  
5:14 p.m.**

"You told Krycek about Emily?"

Scully frowned. "It came up in conversation, Mulder. While we were driving here."

Apparently, from his expression, the condensed version wasn't going to do.

"We were talking about what the Syndicate was doing with the beryllium they're getting from Beeson-Lymon, how the sale of it is used to finance their hybrid research, and I said something about how despicable it was to create helpless children... And he looked shocked. Mulder, he had no idea what I was talking about. He said he was certain the Project wasn't creating children." She paused. "But of course that led to why I would have assumed they had."

"And you told him what exactly?"

"That I discovered her a year and a half ago"--she pursed her lips--"through circumstances that I didn't go into. And that you investigated, but eventually your leads dried up."

"What did he say?"

"He wondered whether what was going on in San Diego might have been part of the work of this Pasadena group. He said the Project has no operations on the west coast."

"Sounds like while we're waiting for Krycek to track down this group in Pasadena, it might not hurt to go back to San Diego and see what we can find."

"Depending on what kind of assignment Manny and I get after we're finished here. If they keep us working together."

He sighed. "Yeah."

He got up, drifted to the window and looked out, jaw set. Finally he returned and sat down again. "Sounds like your trip with Krycek was enlightening."

She shrugged. "It was difficult, Mulder. But every once in a while something unexpected would come out."

"Like?"

"He asked me to call the hospital and request that they not feed Tracy, to make it easier for her to slip away at the end. He said that where he grew up, that's what they did to people who were dying. And at some point later, it occurred to me to ask him whether these dying people he was referring to were children. I don't know what suggested that connection to me."

"And what did he say?"

"He said yes. It was obvious he didn't want to talk about it."

"Almost sounds like he was living in some sort of group situation. But where would they just let children go like that? I wonder where he grew up."

Scully shrugged. "I have no idea."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

_To: spooky@quick.net_   
_From: topaz@rift.net_   
_Re Jeremiah Smith: Yeah, I know him. I visited the first agricultural colony three years ago. Nothing official, just checking it out because a source had told me about it. Smith likes to be cryptic, which was getting on my nerves, but the operation was an eye-opener. He has the ability to heal._

_Saw him again a year later. They'd moved the operation to a place about 50 miles away. He was talking about having some sort of critical information to share "with the right person", and he mentioned that he'd taken you to the first location, so I'm guessing he was thinking about you as a candidate. His take was that you basically ignored whatever larger picture he wanted to show you once you'd seen the girl clones; he seemed irked about that. But he didn't tell me his secret, either, so I guess neither of us rates. Aside from that, I've always gotten the feeling that he's definitely not committed to the colonization agenda and was looking for a way to trip it up... or for someone (human) who could do it for him because he can't or won't do the deed himself. No idea what to make of the possibility of him working with this other clone, though._

_Re Vanek: You're not likely to find anything. Remember this woman grew up in a place where neighbors turned in neighbors to the authorities and kids were trained to inform on their parents. You learn quickly enough that you can't trust anybody with anything. You figure out how to protect yourself and your work because nobody else is going to do it. It's not like here. She probably doesn't even have her data on a computer. Maybe on some sort of portable drive. Could even be on paper, possibly encrypted._

_Re Fowley: Never actually met her, but was informed by a third party a few years back that we shared some DNA. Nice surprise, right? Sounds like the group's cleaning house, getting rid of anyone associated with the old man._

_And for what it's worth, I didn't choose the old fuckers as "associates". They're pathetic cowards who try to convince themselves they're doing something noble while they screw the race over to save their own asses. But they were where the game was being played, and if you don't play, you have no chance at all to affect the outcome._

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Owensburg, Kentucky  
7:36 p.m.**

"He seems a bit touchy about the syndicate men," Scully said, peering over Mulder's shoulder at the computer screen. "What exactly did you say to him?"

He shrugged. "I just said it looked like Diana's murder was their work. I guess I said "your old associates". It wasn't an accusation." His lower lip pushed forward and he went back to reading.

"And evidently Cancer Man never bothered to tell him he had a sister. Or half-sister. Mulder, I can't imagine what that would be like, to have some outsider tell you you had another sibling your parent never bothered to tell you about." She straightened. "I'm going to go get a quick shower. Then I should write up what I remember about Emily's situation and send it to Krycek."

He nodded absently and scrolled to the top of Krycek's e-mail. So Krycek knew Jeremiah Smith. He didn't just say "I've met him" or "I ran across him once". And Smith had been frustrated with him.

Looking up, he closed his eyes and tried to think back to his visit to the ginseng installation. It was true; he'd pretty much gotten tunnel vision once he saw the clones. Even though they weren't Samantha, just to have her there, to be able to touch her and look into her eyes, everything about her so familiar, even after all the intervening years... It had been overwhelming.

Mulder opened his eyes and returned to the message. Krycek certainly wasn't holding out hope of anyone finding Vanek's research. Though his comment about her work possibly being on paper reminded him of the printout the Gunmen had found at the drop site at the Baltimore airport. Spooky could easily have months or years worth of them stored somewhere. They might yield some information, if you could trace trends across time. And he knew where Smoky lived. Or at least, he knew where the old bastard had lived a couple of years ago. He'd have to check the place out...

Or maybe not, in case the Syndicate might have the place under surveillance, just waiting for him to show up. Maybe he could get Byers and Frohike to go, and Langly could provide eyes and ears outside. Or if Smoky had moved, maybe Krycek would know where he'd gone. Though he'd probably have to be a little more careful with the wording he was using if he expected Krycek to feel generous enough to offer that kind of information.

Mulder scrolled down. Krycek's points about the influence of Vanek's cultural background were well taken, but one sentence made him stop. Krycek was talking about the attitude the Soviet system engendered in its subjects, but the language he was using was distinctly personal: "You learn quickly enough", and "You figure out". Krycek was obviously fluent in Russian, and while he hadn't for a minute bought Krycek's story about his parents being Cold War immigrants--a good thing now, knowing just how far off the mark it had been--he'd never considered the possibility that Krycek might actually have grown up there.

Except that it made no sense. How would Krycek have ended up outside the country. And why?

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Longmont, Colorado  
8:47 p.m.**

Carrie slipped the thermometer from her patient's mouth. She glanced at the reading and then at him.

"You know, up until about an hour ago I'd have said you'd made a lot of progress today, but my guess is that if I were to test your blood pressure right now, I'd find it fairly elevated." She paused. "Am I right?"

He pushed out a breath and finally glanced over at her. "That obvious, huh?"

She gave a small smile. "Well, if I were to rate what I'm seeing, I'd say it's somewhere along about, oh... caged tiger."

She set the thermometer aside. "Look, I know it's not like last time; the physical symptoms aren't nearly so aggressive..." She shrugged. "I guess you just need to know it's difficult on this end. Someone shows up in bad shape, with two gunshot wounds and a need for secrecy, but no story, and I have to hide it from Tyler. I realize you have no desire to spill your guts here; I know it's hard for any guy, and believe me, I don't mean to pry. But I do want to help you--you know I do, Alex--and I'm feeling a little helpless, frankly. I guess I need some reassurance. And a place to start." She gave what she hoped was a positive but non-intrusive look.

He turned away. She watched his chest rise and fall.

"Hell, I wouldn't know where to start," he said finally. "Not much in my life's likely to make any sense to"--he turned to her--"anyone who lives a normal life. Guess it would sound a lot like... science fiction."

Carrie leaned forward in her chair, resting her elbows on her knees.

"You know the stuff that was giving me the flashbacks before?"

"The black wormy things?"

"Yeah." He sniffed in a breath. "Everything revolves around that. The first time I saw the stuff, I was eleven years old. You know anything about the Tunguska event?"

"Wasn't it... some kind of giant meteor impact over part of Siberia?"

"Yeah." He glanced up at the ceiling. "Some years after that, the black stuff started showing up in the area. It would take over people, animals. Like it did me."

"What do you mean, take over?"

"When it gets in you, it takes over your thought processes, your nervous system--"

"Some kind of virus?"

"Worse than that. It's sentient. Took me from D.C. to North Dakota, put me on a plane, then in a rental car until I got it to where it wanted to go." He glanced over at her. "Sounds insane, right?"

Carrie inhaled and held the breath a moment. "Well, yes... but I saw the kind of crazy results my tests were giving me." She shrugged. "Go ahead."

"Anyway, the Russian scientists who were called in figured whatever it was, if they could find out how it worked, maybe they could turn it into a weapon. So they started studying it, and experimenting on political prisoners."

"Why?"

"To find a vaccine. So they'd be able to protect their own troops."

"And you say you saw this as a boy?"

"Someone took me there, someone who was working to control it."

"But why? Why would anyone expose a child to that kind of thing?" The idea was worse than appalling. "Where were your parents, to allow this?"

Alex let out a sharp sound that wasn't quite a laugh. "It was my"--he seemed to swallow around the word--"father who took me. He wanted me to know what I was going to be up against. What my life was going to be about."

A moment of stunned silence and Carrie realized her mouth was open. She worked to close it.

"Wow. Just wow. I can't believe what kind of father it would take to... to hold that kind of attitude, to expose a child to something like that."

"Tip of the iceberg," he said. "Believe me, you don't want to know." He let out a  sigh. "But that's water under the bridge now." His voice had gotten gritty. "Anyway, today--"

"It was a message you got, right? It was obvious you were frustrated after that."

He nodded. "This whole thing's ended up being more complicated than probably anybody imagined.  There's a lot of jockeying for influence, power plays, spy vs. spy kind of thing involved." He looked past her. "It all adds up to there being hardly anyone you can trust. That mail--turns out a guy I figured I was going to be able to count on, kind of my ace in the hole, may be working against us..."

He shook his head and paused. There was a glint of something in his eye. Moisture.

"Trust shattered?"

"Yeah." His Adam's apple dipped. "If it's what it looks like. It's kind of like... drowning in the ocean, way the hell away from land, or any help, and every once in a while a piece of wood drifts by and you get to hang on for a while." Silence, except for the distant ticking of the hall clock. "And then it's gone again, ripped away one way or the other."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**9:14 p.m.**

Eighteen paused in the doorway. The bed was draped in shadow, the quilt pushed to one side against the lingering warmth of the day. The smooth head showed above the top of the sheet. Four sat in the chair, his hand outstretched above the female's torso.

"You're checking again?" she said.

"Yes."

"Then you've not yet made a decision."

He turned to look at her. The gray in his hair seemed more muted, less silver than usual. Lines of concern ridged his brow. "No."

"This goes beyond, you know," she said quietly. "Here, there's such a thing as meddling, which is beyond mere saving."

"The personal," he said, "which goes beyond the interest of the group."

"The group is what we know." She rubbed a thumb against the door jamb.

"Humans operate in the personal, Eighteen. It could provide a motivation." He turned back to the figure on the bed.

"It could add a burden."

"Yes, possible. Which is why I've not yet decided."

"But the possibility is there?"

"Yes. Still viable."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

**Owensburg, Kentucky  
10:36 p.m.**

Scully turned off Dale's computer and went quietly to the picture window. Dull, silver light from a nearly-full moon illuminated the still-life outside.

It had always been hard to think of Emily, to bring the searing pain back center-stage while trying to catch some glimpses of the little girl who, for as strange as her biology or the circumstances of her creation, had still been a real child, her own flesh and blood. Re-opening that chapter was an exercise in reaching through thorns in the hope of grasping a flower.

Krycek had said there could be others. The idea had occurred to her, too, more than once, but she'd managed to brush it aside as silly speculation. Perhaps she just hadn't wanted to face the possibility.

And there had been disturbing parallels, thinking back on Emily now. Though the causes were different, both Emily and Tracy had developed conditions that appeared to deliberately shut them down. Both their bodies had disappeared. And something that had passed her by completely at the time--Dr. Calderon running from her in the hospital hallway--now seemed to have a chilling twist: She'd reached for the man and found it to be someone else. It was exactly what Mulder described seeing when Jeremiah Smith had escaped them in the Social Security building.

But she could tell him all this in the morning. Both of them could use a clear night's sleep, and if she mentioned it now, he'd likely be up all night, endless possibilities clicking together in tentative combinations in his head, a Rubik's cube of speculation.

Scully breathed in deeply and exhaled, attempting to let the subject go, then turned and went into Mulder's room. Going around to the far side of the bed, she pulled back the covers and slipped between the sheets. A warm arm came out and pulled her close. She settled against Mulder's side, her head on his chest.

"Finish writing your e-mail to Krycek?"

"Mm-hm." She closed her eyes. She could feel his head dip toward her;  lips brushed against her hair. A big, warm hand smoothed the hair back from her face and settled beside her temple.

"I'm surprised you're not asleep already, Mulder," she said.

"Been thinking."

She waited, but he said nothing more. Deliberately, she replaced each image of the hospital, Dr. Calderon or the white, sand-filled coffin with pictures of her mother, the room she was staying in, and the colorful four-year-old New Rose. She would have to visit her mom. It had been nearly week, and she was making good progress against the disease that could have proved fatal without the alertness of Will Wilkins, and the information Krycek had provided.

Eventually she shifted, turning away from Mulder, then settling back against him. After a moment his chin came to rest against her shoulder. His breathing was deep and steady, not the shallow breathing of someone falling sleep. She opened one eye and glanced at the clock. Nearly twenty minutes had passed.

She turned her head and glanced up at him. Open eyes met her in the dark.

"Still awake?" she said, puzzled.

"Still thinking."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

 

_To: topaz@rift.net_   
_From: spooky@quick.net_   
_Got to thinking tonight about that trip we made to Russia, and something that happened in the parking lot at JFK before we left. Besides the fact that I was acting like an ass. I remember you saying that your parents were Cold War immigrants, but more than that, it was the way you said it that stuck with me, the look in your eyes and how you almost spit the words at me. Knowing the facts now, I can't imagine how hard it must have been to get them out._   
_-M_


	4. Chapter 4

**Saturday, 29 May 1999**   
**Longmont, Colorado**   
**7:42 a.m.**

Carrie wrapped her fingers around her coffee cup and closed her eyes against the glare of the morning sunshine coming from the east. The air was still chilly, but the sunlight against her skin, elemental as it was, felt absolutely wonderful.

Footfalls sounded on the stairs inside the house and came closer. There was a click of the latch on the sliding patio door, and her guest appeared in the opening.

"Mind if I have some of that coffee in the kitchen?" he said.

"If you keep it to a small cup." She turned to fully face him. "Sorry, it interacts with your meds. Do you want me to go up and get you some?"

"I can do it, as long as I take my time. Anyway, it's not like I'm going to be running any marathons the rest of the day." He paused. "Uh, is it okay if I check my e-mail after that? I'm expecting something."

"Sure. I'll go up and sign in in a minute. By the way, thanks for giving me the nudge to come out here again. I'd forgotten how pleasant it can be."

Her guest--mysterious guest--grunted half a reply and disappeared inside. Carrie turned back to consider her neighbor's huge oak tree, which would cast an umbrella of welcome shade over the yard by mid-afternoon. It might not be worth asking Alex whether he'd slept well given his remarks the evening before. For her own part, she'd found herself awake several times contemplating an organism intelligent enough to direct--or appear to direct--a human on an extended journey to a specific destination. She was known by her colleagues as someone able to think outside the box, but this claim seemed to be more a case of tossing the box out the nearest window. Perhaps using a catapult.

On the other hand, aside from the very real psychological trauma that the mysterious substance had brought on in Alex the last time (a point obviously in favor of an expanded set of hypotheses), her experience with him had been that he was serious and determined, not a man you'd suspect of adhering to wild, unsubstantiated theories. Or easily influenced by anything he couldn't prove or verify for himself.

Carrie took a final sip from her cup. Were the black wormy things--a shape that had traumatized Alex so much the first time she worked with him that she'd had to check all his food for anything vaguely resembling it--a vector for something that had dispersed from the meteor hit? And what was the story behind a father who would traumatize a son by exposing him to anything even vaguely like this?

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: topaz@rift.net_   
_From: thelark@zipmail.com_   
_You asked for relevant information from the incident of my finding a child of mine in San Diego. Here are the salient points as I remember them._

_The way I initially found Emily is something I can't explain logically. Suffice it to say that I did encounter her. Mulder discovered later that children like her were being produced in a nursing home where elderly women were given hormones to enable them to carry and deliver the embryos they'd been implanted with. Evidently the children were then adopted out, or at least, that was the case with Emily. We were told that she had a rare form of autoimmune hemolytic anemia, and as a result was enrolled as a subject in a double-blind medical trial run by a pharmaceutical firm named Prangen, located in Chula Vista, just south of San Diego proper. But the company may have been a front, as Mulder discovered that the doctor who was treating her was working with the people producing these children. At a certain point we noticed that Emily had a greenish cyst at the base of her neck, and once it had been punctured during a biopsy procedure, not only did she excrete the green fluid we've observed in what Mulder believes to be clones or hybrids, but she began to rapidly develop an autoplastic mass, a tumor that was determined to have its origin in the cyst and that spread quickly along the nervous system to the brain, killing her._

_Having now seen what happened to Tracy, I admit I can't help but consider the disturbing similarities of the two cases, not in the physical particulars but in some rather startling general terms. 1) Though Tracy had normal human blood, and the physiology of the two cases are distinct, in both instances there was a rapid, almost deliberate-seeming attack on vital biological systems, quickly resulting in death. 2) In both cases, the patient's body disappeared (the coffin I received turned out to be filled with sand.) And 3) one more thing I wouldn't have realized prior to a discussion Mulder and I had yesterday: at one point, Emily's doctor came to the hospital surreptitiously and injected her with something. I noticed him in the hallway and went after him, but he took off running. When a security guard and I caught up with the person we'd been chasing and turned him around, it was someone else, although dressed in the type of clothing I was convinced I'd seen on the doctor. So if Mulder's asumption is correct, we may be dealing with shapeshifters in both cases._

_I hope this account will prove helpful to you in some way. Let us know if you have questions about any particular detail. I will have Mulder send you his own recollection of what he discovered there._

_I hope, too, that you've found good care for your wounds, and that you're making progress on the road to healing. I don't say this lightly, however, as I know how deeply someone can imprint upon you even when you only have the privilege of knowing them for a very short time._

_-DS_

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**8:23 a.m.**

Four sat beside the bed. The period for viability was ending, and any action taken would have to happen now. He closed his eyes for a moment. Reaching out with his mind, he became aware of the sunlight on the roof, the gravel driveway leading to the little house, and Eighteen washing dishes in the kitchen. Her hands were busy, but she was pondering this decision he faced.

Or this precipice, as she saw it. She believed that to do this was to go too far. That it was one thing to equip a species to defend itself against an invasion of the homeworld they'd built, but quite another to step past the clear line of what concerned their survival and reach into individual lives, to do what they couldn't do for themselves, and in the process create a consequence that would affect their lives for years to come.

Of course, he'd crossed this barrier into the personal before. Perhaps those instances were the easy first steps on the journey that had led him here: a healing here, an exposure of information there. They were not so different, nor arguably any more influential, than the thousand random occurrences that could influence any individual life's path at a given point.

He looked at the female, eyelids thin in sleep and, reaching forward, spread his hand above the lower half of her torso. He closed his eyes again and focused.

It was the small gestures that had stayed with him: the smoothing of hair from the face, the gentle rocking, the welcoming of the child who had intruded on the scene. All were elements that defined this species at its best, and that deserved to be rewarded.

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: topaz@rift.net_   
_From: spooky@quick.net_   
_Re San Diego: Scully was busy on the front lines with her daughter, so I went searching for background information. Paid a visit to her doctor, who claimed he couldn't transfer his records on her to the hospital where we had her because it might end up costing the corporation in legal fees. Nice guy. In the end I figure it was only a line anyway. Given that he was part of whatever group was behind this, they wouldn't have allowed their work to be exposed under any conditions. I tracked the doctor, ended up at a rest home where he was on staff, prepping elderly women to be used as gestational chambers. Did a little poking around and saw a live fetus in a jar of green liquid, and some small vials of the green stuff.  Took a handful of them but in the end only got away with one. Not sure if it was actually the same substance as in the jar with the fetus. I took it to the lab, but they said whatever it was, it was temperature-sensitive and the composition had probably changed. They said their best guess was that it was some sort of nutrient medium._

_Someone must have spotted me, because at the end of my visit to the rest home, SDPD showed up and then the doctor, a guy named Calderon. I guess I put two and two together in the moment--Emily's green blood and something about Calderon's walk and facial expression. When I saw the SDPD cop was going to fire at Calderon in spite of my warning not to, I got the hell out of there. (What is it with people?  When you warn them about potentially lethal aliens or clones, they never pay any attention.) But outside, the cop showed up unharmed, said he had Calderon cuffed in the hallway. It was all split-second... and then the 'cop' gets into Calderon's SUV and drives off. So yeah, it appears we've got some sort of shape-shifter involved._

_Scully may have told you Emily's body disappeared. I followed up on Prangen and they gave me a line about Calderon as a one-off rogue and that the trial had been shut down. That was the only information I could get. Company seems to have a solid history beyond that, as far as I could tell. Checked with the SDPD guy a few months later and he hadn't been able to find out anything more. Calderon--or whoever he actually was--appeared to have left the area. Local hospitals were alerted, in case there were any more kids like Emily around, but none of them reported having seen a case like hers._

_That's all I have. Ask if you have questions._

_One more thing: Friends of mine intercepted a printout last week destined for Smoky, with some kind of update data (we assume) from Vanek's work. I'm thinking he may have more of these stored somewhere. Might be useful to see whether they tell a story. Was he still living in the dingy little place on I St. in Foggy Bottom?_

_-M_

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Owensburg, Kentucky**   
**9:25 a.m.**

"So you understand?" Mulder said, speaking quietly, leaning close.

Angie Connors nodded. "Any inquiry about the kids' health from anyone not known around town. Or inquiries about them and Dr. Vanek."

"Mulder, you know," Scully said, resting a hand on his sleeve, "these men may not be above trying to co-opt someone local, someone who needs money, for example."

He sighed. "Yeah. You're right."

"So anyone, no matter who, asking about the kids' health or doctor." Angie shook her head, resigned.

"What has Dr. Wykoff told them?" Mulder asked. "Do they know about any of this?"

"Not any of the details, thank god. Just that Dr. Vanek left suddenly, and they switched to Dr. Wykoff... and that she'd inadvertently misdiagnosed them and they're not diabetic after all."

"It might be a good idea to keep to their old dietary restrictions for the most part, except in private," Scully said. "Maybe make the occasional treat a private celebration for keeping up appearances."

"Kids eat too much junk these days already. I've tried to keep things pretty much as they were. The problem will come when one of them spouts off to a friend, not thinking, and then it gets around." Angie looked at Mulder. "You know how fast word travels in this town."

"I do. We both do."

"I'd hate to make them fearful, or traumatize them," Scully said. "But on the other hand, these men aren't known for being stopped by obstacles in their way. In this case, it would make sense for your children to be alerted to anyone asking about their health. And I know that often they'll pay more attention to a stranger than to something their parents tell them."

Angie gave an exhausted half-smile. "Tell me about it."

"Do you think it would be okay if I talked with them briefly?"

Angie nodded. "That would probably be a darn good idea. I'll round them up."

Angie got up and disappeared down the hallway. Scully and Mulder both stood. Mulder stared out the window. His lower lip pushed forward.

"What do you think, Mulder?" Her hand grazed his sleeve.

He turned back to her. "I think Angie's got one of the most thankless jobs around, raising these kids, worrying about them, trying to protect them all by herself. Probably beating herself up inside for taking Vanek up on her offer in the first place."

"But it wasn't her fault, Mulder. Vanek was slick. And if you believe what Ché says... Did you know he and Krycek call her 'the piranha'?"

Mulder's eyebrows rose. "Still, it's not likely to make her feel any better. She's their mother."

"They're in here," Angie's voice came from an adjacent room.

Scully led the way into what turned out to be a playroom. Mulder leaned against the door frame.

"Robin. Jared. Leah." Scully knelt down beside the three, who were playing a board game on the carpet. "I have something very important to talk to you about."

Mulder watched the pain in Angie's expression. He tapped her on the shoulder and motioned her out into the hallway.

"No matter what you may be thinking--and I have a pretty good idea, because I'd be thinking the same thing myself--there was nothing you did that brought this on," he said. "We have eyes and ears around town--Rita and Dale, Sandy Miller and others who know what's going on and who'll be staying on alert for anyone asking questions. The blind couple--what are their names?"

"Ray and Debbie."

"Yeah. Nothing much gets past those two. There will be people all over town helping you keep an eye out. And if you need help, Rita knows how to contact us."

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: spooky@quick.net_   
_From: topaz@rift.net_   
_The old man had a place in Woodley Park just for show, for when the Project men were in town, but he liked that little hole on I Street better, so yeah, it's probably your best target. The group doesn't know about it as far as I know, but don't go there yourself; get someone else to do it. You don't want to give them any indications that you're still involved and working against them._

_If you find what you're looking for, maybe you could send a few sample pages this way. Also any of Tracy's medical records from the hospital, if they haven't disappeared. I'm with someone in the medical field at a university, and they might have some input that would be useful. At this point, any workable information is better than nothing._

_Know what you mean about people. What part of "aliens" and "shapeshifters" don't they get?_

_Thanks for the SD info. I'll get my guy on it, start checking out the company and the doctor, but I'll need Emily's full name, address, parents' names--anything that might end up in records they'd keep._

_The I Street place has no security; I think there was a part of him that wanted to tempt fate, or maybe he was just so damned smug he figured he could handle anything that came up. It's easier to spring the lock on the back door than the front. There's an alley right where 26th turns into I. Take it around to the rear._

_Good luck._

_-K_

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Conejo Hills, California**   
**10:35 a.m.**

Maria drove along the coast road with the window down. The air was cool and damp and a curtain of fog hung just beyond the beach, but the scent of salt air was fresh and bracing.

She would have assumed, having finally arrived at her destination yesterday, that today she'd want nothing more than to lie in bed and relax, finally free from the prospect of having to face another eight or ten hours in the truck. But no, she's wakened promptly at 8 a.m. feeling that almost anything would be preferable to staying within the four cramped walls of a motel room. So she'd taken the map from the packet of information on the desk and charted an exploratory loop through part of the town, then via a winding, wooded road to the coast, and now north, where she'd soon pick up a country road headed back in the general direction of where she'd started.

She'd made one stop, at a huge rock in the shape of a gum drop, where there was a pullout for parking. She'd drifted to an observation point, then to a fence where waves could be seen crashing on the rocks far below. The scene had reinforced her belief in the deplorable level of intelligence humanity generally displayed, because despite the clear warning sign on the fence about the danger of sudden rogue waves, a hole had been cut in the chain link long ago and she'd watched three people go through it on their way down to the rocks and potential disaster. There were times when she questioned her efforts to develop a vaccine that would save such people, though in the end, the vaccine was as much directed at Purity as anything--a stop sign. This far and not a step farther.

The mountains opposite the shoreline ended abruptly and Maria's turn-off came into view. Exiting, she followed a curve onto a two-lane road that cut a path between the mountains' shadow on the right and miles of broad, flat agricultural lands on the left. Crops were planted in some of the fields: endless rows of broccoli, cabbage and onions whose scents drifted toward her on the crisp breeze. A mile down the road, she came to an intersection with a stop light. The road ahead promised only more of the same, but the one to the right might offer something a bit different and, craning to see, she could make out a field of flowers, thin horizontal strata of whites, pinks, purples and blues, beyond the rows of potted palms on the corner. Maria signalled and turned right.

Beyond the flower field, where short, brown-skinned men were gathering cut flowers, there was a bridge, and yet another intersection. On an impulse, Maria turned right again, though after a few snaking curves, she decided that this time perhaps she'd made a mistake, as the road seemed to be leading toward a narrow canyon up ahead. Then, unexpectedly, a complex of buildings came into view on the left, whitewashed and of the style that seemed so in vogue in this southern part of California--terra cotta tile roofs, wrought iron balconies jutting from second-story windows. And bars--albeit decorative bars--on all the windows at ground level.

Maria pulled to the side of the deserted road, beside a windowless shack. Obviously the complex was old, and from the look of it, deserted, because there were parking lots of cracked asphalt that she could see from her vantage point, but no vehicles filled them. She started up again and drove a little farther, where she found a gate with a sign that said "Ventura State Hospital". The gate stood open.

Why not? She was in the mood for an adventure, and this place definitely piqued her curiosity. Maria eased onto the gas pedal and started up the entry road.

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Longmont, Colorado**   
**10:38 a.m.**

Carrie paused in the doorway to her patient's room. After a moment Alex stirred and turned toward her. He seemed to have radar for anyone within a certain radius of him, something that three years ago she'd attributed--possibly mistakenly, she realized now--to the mental trauma he'd been experiencing at the time.

"How are you doing?" she said. "I expected I was going to see you downstairs again."

"Tired," he said. He cleared his throat. "Weak, maybe."

"Anything worse than usual?" She approached the bed.

"Don't think so."

She sat down in the chair beside the bed. "More bad news in your e-mail?"

There was the briefest glimmer of a smile. "No. The opposite. Looks like I've got some help with... this nut I'm trying to crack." He paused. After a moment his eyes closed.

"Well, I'm glad for you. Nobody should have to work alone." She stood. "You call me if you need anything."

He nodded.

At the door she turned. "Maybe it's a letdown reaction."

"What's that?" One eye opened.

"A very non-scientific theory of mine, but it seems to hold, from what I've observed. When you have to be strong, you are; you tighten up and carry whatever load it is you have to carry, do whatever you need to do, even the seemingly impossible. But when you find the pressure's off--the danger's past, or you've got someone to share your burden--you let up mentally without realizing it, and that's when it hits you, the weight of whatever it is you've been doing." She smiled briefly. "It passes, though. It's just a stage and then you're on your way again."

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: tinman@zipmail.com_   
_From: spooky@quick.net_   
_I've been informed that the house in Reston where Monday's events took place has video feeds in many of the rooms. Does the Bureau have these recordings? If so, can I access them? Smoky's group is supposedly watching me, and if I view the tapes, I'll know how much and what they may have learned from Smoky's minion about me and what I'm looking for. Will be back in D.C. by 1 p.m. Please contact me as soon as you get this._

_-FM_

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**10:42 a.m.**

Her fingers searched for the edge of the quilt but found only the smoothness of the sheet. She stretched her mind to listen. Eighteen was folding laundry in the kitchen, and Four...

Four was walking down the gravel driveway, past another house, to the mailbox.

There was a faint, warm feeling in her belly, almost a vibration. She slipped a hand from the sheet, reached up carefully and pressed her index finger against the window glass, feeling the warmth of the smooth surface.

She knew something now, a piece to her puzzle. The past two days she'd practiced loosening her eyelids, keeping them stretched perfectly thin to feign sleep. When Four came in, the image had been in his mind again--the bright hallway and the interior window on the far side.

Only this time he'd stepped closer to the scene across the hall. Inside the room she'd seen before, a man in jeans and a blue T-shirt stood beside a bed while the man and woman who had been standing outside in Four's earlier image removed tubes and wires from a pale girl lying there. When they were done, the man came closer. Carefully he smoothed the hair away from the girl's face. Then he reached into his pocket and brought out something small, which he set on top of the blanket. Working one-handed, he managed to put the earring into the hole in the girl's ear and then coaxed the tiny back piece on.

She had no idea who the man was; he seemed completely unfamiliar. But the identity of the girl had been clear from the start.

Carefully her fingers traveled up her neck, then along the ridge of her jaw until they reached the small, warm bump of the turquoise and silver earring. 

  

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Near I St and 26th NW**   
**Washington, D.C.**   
**11:26 a.m.**

Frohike glanced up at the back of the old brick building and adjusted his microphone and earpiece. "Is it a go?" he asked.

"Clear where I am," came Byers' voice. He was stationed farther back in the parking lot.

"Ditto for the street," came Langly through slight static.

Frohike pulled out a lockpick, tapped the door tentatively with a gloved finger--no juice, thank goodness--then inserted the pick and worked it carefully. This could be like going into the grottoes of hell... in real world terms. Who knew what they'd find?

He felt the lock give and carefully turned the handle, then eased the door open. A darkened hallway opened in front of him. He switched on his headlamp and glanced up to make sure there wasn't any sort of booby trap above the door, but the area seemed clear. Grabbing a small plastic canister from his pocket, he sprinkled powder across the opening, but no laser beam appeared. True, Alex Krycek had told Mulder the place had no security, but in spite of Mulder's seeming new openness to trusting the guy, Frohike wasn't about to take any chances when it was his own ass on the line.

Frohike stepped through the doorway. "I'm in. No swinging blade over the doorway. At least, nothing yet."

He started down the hallway. Laundry on the left, kitchen on the right, with the crusty remains of a frozen dinner sitting in the sink beside several cigarette butts. Then a half-bath on the left, and the front of the place, a living room distinctly smaller than Mulder's. Small TV on a stand, a couch and chair, side table with ashtray, a half-empty bottle of St. Pauli Girl, and several newspapers: Washington Post, New York Times, Le Monde. The old bastard hadn't been much of a housekeeper--there was dust on tables, ledges and armrests--but he probably hadn't wanted to let anyone in to snoop around.

A set of stairs led to a second story with two bedrooms and another bath.

"What's going on in there?" Langly's voice crackled in his ear.

"Nothing yet. Just checking out the place first. I'm upstairs. Everything still clear out there?"

"Yeah, but don't get carried away."

"Aw, I wanted to check out the sex toys."

"You're kidding? He's got sex toys?"

"Moron." Frohike chuckled. "Gotcha!"

The back bedroom seemed to be the one Smoky used. There was a single bed, a dresser, a faded rug on the floor. Frohike went through one drawer after another--nothing but the old geezer's clothes--and moved to the closet. Hanging suits, shirts, ties. On the floor, shoes and two file boxes. Frohike set them out on the rug and felt along the walls for anything interesting, like the outline of a safe, but there was nothing.

He backed out of the closet. Neither file box had a lock. He opened the first one, filled with newspaper clippings and old photographs, and quickly set it aside. The second one seemed to contain the usual household expense receipts. He remembered the feel and look of the paper Vanek's results had been printed on, but he wasn't finding it here.

"Frohike? How's it going?"

Byers' voice made Frohike jump.

"Fine, until you just scared the bejezus out of me."

"Any sign of the documents?"

"Unfortunately, I've got nada. I'm going to check the other bedroom and then go downstairs."

"Fine. Use your time economically. I'll check back in a few minutes if I don't hear from you before then."

"Ten-four," Frohike replied, and set the one file box back inside the closet. He went to the bed and felt along the opening between the mattress and box spring, but all he found there was a crumpled copy of a magazine called Roman a Clef. After a quick glance he tossed it back where he'd found it.

The front bedroom wasn't any more revealing. Unless, Frohike thought, you wanted evidence that the old buzzard had no life. There wasn't even a bed in it. After checking the usual places, he went downstairs, the file box of clippings and pictures in hand.

Hall closet, drawer in the side table, a check under the sofa cushions and down the sides of the leather wing chair. Nothing but bits of the usual litter, 17 cents and a parking receipt from the Watergate. Two hats, an overcoat and an umbrella comprised the entire inventory of the closet. Frohike made an obscene gesture at the shadowed interior.

"Hey, Frohike..." It was Langly again.

"Unless somebody's coming, save it, because I'm not in a good mood. This place is a total bust."

"Okay, I'll wait."

Frohike started down the hallway and paused at the intersecting doorways. Bathroom or kitchen? Not eager to see what the old buzzard kept in the bathroom vanity, or whether he left a bathtub ring, he opted for the kitchen. He went through the lower cabinets, sparsely populated with a handful of pots and pans and a few thin plastic plates and bowls left over from convenience meals, and half a dozen silverfish that scurried away from his headlamp. He growled, sighed, then pulled a chair from the table and set it next to the counter so he could check the upper cabinets. Which turned out not to have anything more valuable than the ones below them. Inside the fridge, a piece of cake covered in plastic wrap was starting to mold nicely. He closed the door, then pulled the bulky appliance out far enough to verify that no valuables had been stashed behind it.

"Okay, you bastard, where'd you keep the stuff?"

His comment brought immediate replies from the other two. Frohike frowned. "Disregard," he sighed.

Under the sink sat two paper grocery bags. He could see crumpled packaging and the shriveled peelings from an apple sticking up above the one on the right. The left one--he pulled it out--seemed to be a recepticle for old newspapers. He picked up the top few. They'd been placed very neatly; in fact, it wasn't whole newspapers but just a few crisply folded sections. He took out another handful.

"Eureka, boys! We're in business!"

Below the seven or eight folded newspaper sections was at least half a grocery bag of neatly-stacked lab printouts. Quickly he stood, ignoring the excited questions from his two companions, picked up the file box and the paper bag, nudged the undersink door closed with a foot and headed for the back door.

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: spooky@quick.net_   
_From: tinman@zipmail.com_   
_Yes, we have the recordings, which means those with influence also know about them, and who they might be signed out to. However, I had a second copy made before they were logged into evidence, figuring you might have some interest in viewing them. Let me know how you want to connect on this._

_-WS_

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Ventura State Hospital**   
**Carmena, California**   
**12:05 p.m.**

Maria walked through a deeply shadowed archway and found herself at the entrance to a huge, grassy courtyard. Small roads--undoubtedly designed for service vehicles--passed through the north and south ends, and the entire thing was ringed with buildings, some with arcades and arched doorways, all with tile roofs, looking as if they were relics of another era, and probably another culture. She glanced up as two swallows kited by overhead and finally swept up into a nest wedged against the shadowed roof of a passageway.

She'd come across only one person so far in her ramblings here, a woman working for the satellite campus of a Los Angeles area university headquartered in a small building within the complex, who informed her that the place had for many years been a mental hospital, as the sign indicated, but that the hospital had closed several years earlier. Now, while the state bureaucrats in charge debated the future of the facility, it remained virtually empty.

And, as Maria herself had discovered, more often than not unlocked. She had tried various doors in a number of different small courtyards and had discovered that the majority of them yielded to her inquiring touch. She'd found what must have been dormitories, classrooms, even a small hospital with an operating room. The electricity was still hooked up, and several sinks had yielded running water. Which meant, if it came to that and the need to hide became paramount, that this might prove a convenient place to stay.

Besides, the campus was scenic and some of the plant life she'd encountered was quite exotic. In several courtyards she'd seen hibiscus bushes the size of trees, one of them with a trunk braided like challah, huge reddish-pink flowers accenting its obviously aged branches. There had been stands of white, yellow-throated iris in several locations, spreading trees covered in purple blossoms and a number of tall, spindly poinsettias accenting the white walls with their dramatic blood-red bracts.

Maria took a few steps into the courtyard. Silence hung over the lawns and the empty buildings in the sun. Turning, she looked up to see tiny plants--succulents and cactus--struggling to grow between the roof tiles, one of them shaped almost like a rose, thick-petaled in soft, mossy greens.

Stripped of its history, it was a supremely peaceful place. It might also prove a very useful place, were the need to arise.

Yes, she would definitely have to come here again.

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Scully's apartment**   
**Washington, D.C.**   
**1:42 p.m.**

"Thanks, guys," Mulder said. "Smoky'd be rolling around in his grave if he knew about this. Or maybe that's wishful thinking." Something sharp flashed in his eyes. "But a guy can hope."

"He deserves it," Frohike said. "The place was a pit, by the way. I mean, for someone with the kind of influence--and we can only presume, money--he must have had."

"We figure he put the data sheets where he did so if he encountered some emergency, he could just pick them up and walk away as if he were taking out the trash," Byers said.

"Which means he obviously considered them valuable," Langly added. "By the way"--he held out a package--"here are the tapes Skinner wanted you to have."

Mulder took them. "Great. Like I said, Smoky's old group is supposedly watching me, and I didn't want to put Skinner under suspicion by meeting with him directly."

"If they're watching you, aren't they going to know you're here with Scully?" Langly asked.

"I took a cab to my place first, then came here through the alleys."

Scully appeared from the bedroom at the sound of her name.

"We should be going," Byers said. "Keep us posted."

"Will do, boys."

Mulder ushered them out, then closed the door and locked it. He turned around and raised an eyebrow. "You look sharp, Agent Scully. I like the yellow blouse."

She shrugged. "I thought maybe it was time to break out of the mold. Besides, it's almost summer."

"You look"--he approached her, leaned down and covered her mouth with his own--"good enough to eat." A tentative brush of his tongue and her lips yielded, giving him entry. Current surged through him; her arms reached around his neck and held on. Lifting her up against him, he moved a few steps, pinning her against the kitchen doorway. Her legs locked around his waist.

"Mulder--"

"Mm?" A breath and then a return to her mouth.

"Mulder, I told my mother I'd be there at 2:45. And I need to stop at Ché's on the way and talk to him about this bank card of Sandy's. I promised her."

He buried his head against the side of her neck and smiled into the dark hollow. "I know."

"Rain check?" she said, brushing a kiss against his ear.

"I hope the forecast is for rain tonight."

"It is." He could hear the mischief in her voice. "Lots of rain, if I remember correctly."

He grinned, let her down and planted a kiss on top of her head. "Knock 'em dead, Scully."

She blushed and brushed her hands over her clothes, smoothing out the wrinkles. "I'm sorry I won't be here to check out those tapes with you." She paused. "I mean, in terms of solidarity; I'm not sure I could stand to re-watch our encounter with the Smoking Man. Being there in the flesh was more than enough."

"It's okay." After a pause, he bit his lip. "I was thinking that maybe it'd be better if I watched them alone, anyway. At least the first time."

She flashed him a look of concern. "I imagine the whole thing could be difficult." Her hand closed around his arm. "Don't take what you see too seriously, Mulder. Remember that the Smoking Man is dead now. He can't touch any of us anymore."

He nodded and wandered to the couch. When she'd gone, he picked up the box the Gunmen had brought, opened it and went through the tapes, looking at the labels. He slipped out the one labeled "A" and turned it over, then held it up, considering it. He tapped the edge against his upper lip. Finally, letting out a sigh, he got up and slipped it into the player.

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Ché's apartment**   
**Washington, D.C.**   
**1:55 p.m.**

"This is the information on the card," Scully said, handing Ché a piece of paper.

"Yes, I remember this card. Aleksei had me set up this account."

Scully's brow creased. "But how could you apply for an account you're not a signer on?"

Ché held up his fingers and wiggled them. "Remote influence."

"Mind you," he added, noting her look of disapproval, "the funding and everything was completely above-board. It was just that she had no ID to offer if she'd gone in directly." He shrugged. "Also, the last name I chose myself. Aleksei wanted to be assured that the card couldn't be used to trace her."

"Because he knew if she was able to get away, the Smoking Man would be looking for her."

"He was a despicable old vulture. I'm glad, for Aleksei's sake, that he's finally gone."

"They seemed to be working together at one point, at least from what we could gather. Krycek did things"--she pursed her lips and paused. Her mouth tightened. "He did things only someone like the Smoking Man would have ordered."

"I am sure Aleksei has done many things I would not want to know about. And yet people evolve, do they not? And one thing I know, gentle lady: that if Aleksei is on your side, you can count on him absolutely. He will not let you down."

"Yes, well, I'm not sure we've reached that point of trust yet. But I have to admit he's been very helpful to Mulder and me over the past several weeks." She paused. "So about this bank card. It's perfectly legitimate to use it?"

"Yes. Twelve hundred--the original amount--was received in cash; I believe it's what the old vulture paid her for assisting Krycek. And the remaining $900 was transferred from one of Aleksei's accounts."

Scully's eyebrows rose. "One of? You make it sound like he's wealthy."

"He has remaining, in actuality, still a fair amount." He shrugged. "It was how he was able to fund the vaccine research in Kraznoyarsk."

Scully eyes widened. "He was funding the Russian research?"

Ché's complexion quickly reddened. His mouth tightened. "I have definitely said too much."

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Scully's apartment**   
**Georgetown, Washington D.C.**   
**2:09 p.m.**

Mulder clicked fast-forward on the remote. The tape was in a split-screen format that showed the living room, kitchen, a bedroom that appeared to be the one Krycek had ended up in, and the study where they'd had the encounter with Smoky. But there was no audio. It had been a frustrating discovery, but maybe this was all Skinner had been able to manage. And maybe it would force him to look more closely at clues he wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

From the date stamp, it appeared that Smoky, his goons, Krycek and his mother had arrived together at a little after 1:30 in the morning, which explained why Krycek had never called him back at the hospital several hours earlier as he'd agreed to.

His mother had been put immediately into the study, while Krycek had apparently been called in to confer with Smoky in the kitchen. Krycek definitely didn't look happy about being there. Smoky had a smug look, which was par for the course, as if he had everything--and everyone--under control. He seemed to be asking Krycek to do something that Krycek had no interest in. Beyond that, Krycek seemed to be in bad shape, exhausted or maybe in pain. He was leaning pretty heavily against the counter.

Finally he left the kitchen and almost immediately appeared on the study's feed, taking his mother's laptop, apparently searching it for information. Then there was a long space with nothing happening except for Smoky puffing on the occasional Morley in the kitchen, and one or the other of his guards stopping in briefly to report.

Fast-forwarding, Mulder scanned for movement. There. Krycek was getting up from his chair, approaching his mother with the laptop. He seemed to want her to take it, but she wasn't cooperating, probably unsure of where this was headed, and Krycek was getting impatient. The laptop was wobbling in his hand and he was about to--

Good save. At the last minute his mother caught it, but now both of them were down on the floor reaching for something. They came up again. Apparently it had been the mouse.

Wait.

Mulder stopped the tape and rewound. He watched the wobbling laptop, the near-fall, and Krycek go down to the floor beside his mother a second after she did.

He switched to slow-motion. Her hand reached for the mouse, Krycek's hand went out...

He'd handed her something. Mulder rewound, watched the exchange again and clicked back to normal speed. His mother sat back on the couch and opened the laptop, but Krycek stepped in and took it. His mother looked scared, or at least uncertain. But as Krycek typed, her hand inched toward the split between two couch cushions, slipped between them and then returned to her lap. She was looking at something cupped in her hand. Whatever it was, it must have been meant as a sign; he could see her face relax momentarily.

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: cranesbill@zipmail.com_   
_From: spooky@quick.net_   
_Dear Mom,_   
_Sorry for not getting a message off to you sooner. It's been a long, unbelievable week, and we had to go right back to where we'd been staying to tie up some loose ends. My other excuse is that I'm still typing one-handed. But it just occurred to me that you were left up in the air about a lot of what's happened since we saw you Monday._

_Scully took Krycek to be with Tracy at the hospital. She never showed any further brain activity after the report we received in Reston. Once they took her off the machines, she lasted about twenty minutes, but he held her the whole time. Afterward, there was some confusion when a fire alarm went off, and he managed to slip away from us. We have no idea where he is, but I've connected with him the last couple of days through e-mail. He says he's managed to get himself to a doctor he knows who's treating his gunshot wound. Anyway, that's why I sent your laptop back; he left it behind when he took off. When I hear more, I'll let you know._

_I've been watching the security tapes from the Reston house and have a question for you. Did he hand you something when the laptop almost dropped? It looks like it, and it's made me curious. I'd appreciate your input. He was holding the laptop out to you, and you seemed reluctant to take it, and then as soon as you caught it, both of you were down on the floor reaching for something, looked like maybe the mouse._

_I haven't been reinstated. With Leland's group on my tail and the moles they have in place inside the Bureau, any reports I'd file would make it far too easy for them to track my activity. So I'm still on the outside. Though I guess I always have been in a way; no real surprise there, I guess. My old AD suggested that I find a way to make them think I've distanced myself from the search for anything they're interested in, but I still haven't figured out what kind of scenario I could float. Though not for lack of trying._

_I hope you haven't had any more visits or communications from Smoky's 'friends'. If you do, let me know right away and we'll find a safe place for you. I don't want to lose you, especially now when, in a way, we've finally found each other again._

_-F_

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**3:12 p.m.**

There was more she'd seen in Four's mind, but it seemed the only way to process it was to take one small piece at a time, a single puzzle piece, and move it carefully, trying to fit it to the handful she'd already connected.

Four knew the man who had brought her the earring. Some time before, they'd met in a place with tan, dry hills. In a shadowed room, Four had encountered the man and healed the pain in his arm... or what was left of it. She saw the man sweating, tormented almost past speaking, and then later at peace.

But there was more--more to the scene in the room. The man hadn't just brought her an earring. He'd brushed a kiss against her hair. He'd held her, steady and careful, until the emptiness had come.

In Four's mind, she belonged to him.

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: spooky@quick.net_   
_From: cranesbill@zipmail.com_   
_Dear Son--_   
_I was so relieved to get your e-mail. I was out the better part of the afternoon yesterday, and when I got back, there was a notice for a package delivery on the door. I called, but it was too late and they'd closed. They brought it by this morning, and when I saw it was the laptop, I have to say my heart leapt into my throat, not knowing what it would mean about Alex. Thank you so much for returning it, and for letting me know that you're both safe._

_The answer to your question is yes, Alex did hand me something. He had, of course, to act as if he didn't know me, that we were antagonists, and frankly, I wasn't at all sure up to that point where he did stand. When he tried to hand me the laptop, he was very gruff and I had no idea what would happen. Then we were both on the carpet, reaching for the mouse, and he grabbed my fingers and pressed something into my hand. I realized at that point it must be a signal--a sign that we were on the same side, though I wasn't able to look at the object until a few minutes later, as I was aware of the video camera in the corner of the room. It turned out to be a tiny earring on a card, just one. It had a small piece of turquoise on it, set in silver. I never did get to ask him about it, what it was or how he'd come to have it._

_I'm so glad to hear that Alex was with Tracy when she passed. When he brought her to me in Baltimore, it was obvious that they were very close, not at all in an infatuated way, but as if there was something solid but tender between them._

_I know it is likely to take quite some time before it doesn't sting you to hear me speak positively of him. Please know that I don't wish to minimize in any way the painful history you've had with Alex, but I can only go on my own experience, and I appreciate more and more your own steadfastness over so many years._

_I do understand the difficulty of the position you've been placed in professionally. The only thing that comes to mind when I think about it is your father's counsel not to throw in when everyone around you is doing so, compromising yourself and what you believe in. I know that holding your ground can lead to traveling a very hard, lonely road, but please know you have my mental support, for whatever it may be worth. If there is anything I can do to help you as you move forward, please let me know._

_Give my best to Dana._

_-Mom_

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Scully's apartment**   
**Georgetown, Washington D.C.**   
**4:19 p.m.**

Mulder clicked the 'off' button on the remote and stood. He glanced at his watch and went to the window that looked out over the street, but the scene beyond the glass quickly faded to an abstract. He'd watched all the way to the tense climax--himself and Scully braced against the horror to come, Smoky angry, his mother trying not to show anything as Krycek's eyes went from Smoky to Darryl Silver, then the briefest pause, like swallowing air before a dive, and his gun turning, firing, his aim dead-on. Smoky dropping, open-mouthed.

At least Smoky'd lasted long enough to hear their various "betrayals" as he saw them in his warped mind: that he and Scully, Krycek and his mother had all been working together, that they'd connected in spite of the animosity he'd tried to seed between them. That Krycek himself had spearheaded Tracy's escape, the ultimate slap in the face to Smoky's bullshit about raising and grooming him, or whatever it was he'd said.

In a way they'd all won that morning... as much of a victory as anyone could claim against a son of a bitch with a history of destruction like Spender's. Whatever shred of a heart the man had possessed, he'd been knifed in it that morning. Direct hit.

Mulder went to the kitchen, poured himself a glass of water and drank it down, foot tapping against the flooring. Went back to the window. Bit his lip. Looked around, hoping for a stray basketball to bounce, which brought images of his old apartment: the low light, the fish tank, the blanket lying in welcome across the back of the couch.

Letting out a sigh, he went to the phone table and scrawled a note.

Scully--

Spent a couple of hours on the tapes; now I need to stretch my legs and air my head out. Going looking for a pickup game. Call me when you get in.

                                               -M 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Longmont, Colorado**   
**4:56 p.m.**

Krycek's hand skimmed the surface of the raised bed, picking out the small, still-fragile weed seedlings that had sprouted between the dried vegetable plants he'd already pulled out. The sun was warm, penetrating in a way that felt really good... as surface things went.

Inside, he was a mess. There was a headful of strategic stuff to figure out: whether Smith was tied up in this, as Mulder suspected, or whether there was a whole new class of shapeshifting aliens none of them had even known about who might be running everything, or who might at least be higher on the totem pole than the Colonists the old men had been dealing with. Whether Mulder trusted him enough now to share Vanek's research printouts if he found them, and what they'd show, if anything. How long it would take Mulder or Scully to send the details about the little girl Emily that would allow Ché to work his way into Prangen's computers and search out any useful leads. What the hell Smith's story was, if he was, in fact, working for this group.

But overlaying it all--pushing everything else into the background--was a steady heartbeat of the impossible: He wanted her back. The impossibility of it hadn't quieted the need.

It had been easier with Marita, things suddenly soured by betrayal so that he'd been more than eager to push her away. But this... This was a raw wound that just kept throbbing, one there was no defense against, no convenient cure or treatment. She'd probably say it was like the dog she'd lost, that you just had to carry the pain, and keep carrying it, until finally it faded and all that was left were the good memories. Still, all that left you was memories.

"Well, you're certainly putting my efforts to shame."

Carrie's delivery was soft, but her voice made him jump. He looked up to see her sitting on the edge of the adjoining raised bed.

"Sun feels good," he said.

He continued to pull, thin little things you could pinch between two fingers and lift out, fragile root and all.

"There are seeds in the pea pods," he said. "Would've taken them out for you but--" He shrugged and held out his only hand in explanation.

Carrie moved to the pile of pea vines, took a handful and sat back down. She tried to pop one open, but they'd turned tough and leathery. She disappeared into the house for a moment and reappeared carrying a pair of garden shears and a plastic drink cup. Snipping the end off a pod, she forced it open down the middle and stripped out the hardened, pale green seeds.

"If you don't mind my asking," she said, "do you ever use a prosthesis?"

"Yeah. Usually." He slipped his fingers under a fat, spreading weed that was determined not to yield. "The night I left... not planned. Heat'd been a bitch all afternoon and the stump was getting rashy, and that leads to nowhere good, believe me. So I left it off." He dug his fingers further beneath the resistant weed and pulled, coming up with a network of lacy roots. "Bad decision, looks like now."

"I noticed you leaning."

"I know. I'm going to need to get something--sooner rather than later--but these guys looking for me, they're going to have every possible source monitored. If I show up anywhere, make any inquiries..." He shook his head.

"I can't imagine what it would be like to live that way."

"Guess it's"--he shrugged--"the way it's always been." He shook the dirt from the roots and tossed the weed into the pile in the corner of the bed. He flashed on climbing the stairs to the roof patio, Tracy's hip against his, her arm around his waist, finger hooked into his belt loop.

"I have to admit, I woke up a couple of times last night trying to puzzle out the mystery of your black substance. I'm assuming they think it came from the meteor explosion?"

Krycek wrapped his fingers around another large weed and pulled. The top snapped off. He dug into the soft soil to get under the roots. He wasn't letting the little sucker get away from him.

"Which of course would make it some sort of"--she hesitated--"extraterrestrial life form. For as 'out there' as that sounds."

A smile pulled briefly at one corner of his mouth. "Now you know what I feel like. You can't talk to people about stuff like this."

Carrie stripped another podful of peas into the plastic cup.

There was no way to explain most of this--grays, screamers, colonization, the push for hybrids, warring factions--without sounding like a raving lunatic. But as a doctor, she might start to grasp some of the basics through examining data. And he was going to need her help with that anyway.

He cleared his throat. "There's going to be some data coming"--he yanked the roots his fingers had found--"that has to do with this stuff. I'd appreciate it if I could get your opinion."

"Sure, I'd be glad to. What kind of data?"

"Results of some vaccine development tests; I'm not sure how much information there'll be there. Data on"--he didn't even know yet whether Tracy's hospital records were actually available, though Scully'd been there the whole time, helping direct her treatment; she'd be able to put together some sort of recollection about what had gone on--"someone who was... I guess you could say taken over, directed by this stuff, or something pretty damn similar to it..."

He tossed the weed root toward the pile. This was going downhill fast; his voice was going and he was starting to sweat, but the words just kept pouring out.

"This person, uh, died four days ago, just kind of shut down in spite of whatever the docs tried." Pressure in his chest and throat, a stinging in his eyes. "They said it was like someone flipped a switch inside her and shut her down."

Silence.

The seconds seemed to expand. He focused on his breathing, trying to keep it light and even. He could feel Carrie's focus on him, almost a physical weight, but he didn't dare look up. He pictured himself getting up, going inside, but leaving now would speak for itself, and loudly, too.

From where she sat, he could hear the sound of dry peas plinking into the plastic cup. The pressure was a swollen knot now, sitting at the top of his throat. He could feel her, that first night, coming to him in the darkened room, her hand on his shoulder, saying "Lean, Alex. Just lean."

 

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Scully's apartment**   
**Georgetown, Washington DC**   
**7:28 p.m.**

Mulder's eyes traced the hills and valleys of his partner's prone, unclothed form, a landscape he couldn't imagine ever tiring of.

"Mulder, you never did say why you ended up going down to the Mall instead of finding a basketball game."

"It was hot as hell out there." He rolled toward her. "I figured if I went out and got heat stroke, it would mess with your plan for this"--he waggled his eyebrows--"rainy evening."

He reached out a finger and used the back of it to brush away a bead of sweat rolling from her temple toward her ear. She took his hand and worked her fingers between his.

"And that took you all the way to Constitution Park?"

"I just"--he shrugged--"went outside, saw the bus sign on the corner, and ..." He focused on her now. "Maybe I felt like I had to return to the scene of the crime, that sitting there next to the pond, I'd come to some sort of revelation."

"And did you?"

"Just that the only two people I met up with in all the time I spent there are both dead now." A pause. "And that this whole thing would be a lot less complicated if I hadn't blurted out the fact that Vanek was experimenting on kids in front of Spooky's henchman. And a security camera."

"You had no way of knowing you were being recorded. Or even that we'd survive and that it would end up being an issue."

"I know. Doesn't make it any easier, though. Especially for Angie Connors." He glanced up at the ceiling. "I guess I was thinking about Krycek, too."

"What about him?"

"Trying to reconcile the Reston tape to... reality. You know, the last five years. I guess everything he's done lately, and the way he protected my mother there. When he realized we were outside the house, right away he had her close the vents in the room. He was talking to her, off in a corner; you could see the intensity, warning her about what was coming, it looked like."  He glanced at Scully. "No audio, remember? And then when the canisters went through the windows, they were on opposite ends of the couch, and his hand shot out and he pulled her down to protect her."

He set his jaw. He could feel Scully watching him. "Then trying to reconcile that with the last five years, and... There was something Smoky said, about having raised and groomed Krycek--"

"Yes, I remember."

"But I was thinking, what if all this has been some kind of a front, if Smoky's trained him well enough that he can play us in a helpful-looking way, but underneath he's got some other agenda, that he just wants to use us the way he always has."

"I don't know, Mulder. I admit he's always been a schemer, but some of what he's done recently... I'm not sure you could chalk it up to any sort of carefully-laid planning. What about his helping Tracy escape? Or how could he have planned what happened in Reston? The odds certainly weren't in his favor there. And there's Ché." She let go of his hand and propped herself up on one elbow. "Ché does have his own rather unique set of ethics, but it's obvious he's a very good man at the core. I can't see him having the relationship he does with Krycek if he really believed that Krycek was anything like Spender."

She paused. Her brow creased.

"What?"

"He slipped today, Mulder. Ché, I mean. He mentioned that Krycek had been helping to fund the Russian vaccine research."

"What?"

"Evidently Krycek made quite a bit of money selling secrets off your DAT tape three years ago, and he put it in the bank. So when the Russian research was floundering for lack of funding, he stepped in. He presented himself as the representative of some anonymous benefactor."

"That's quite a "slip"."

"Well, what he said originally was that Krycek still had a reasonable amount of money left--we were talking about $900 of his own money Krycek had deposited to Tracy's account--and that it was how he'd been able to help fund the Russian research. The rest... I think he just wanted it to make sense, to give it some context. He seems to think Krycek is very dedicated to fighting this invasion they're predicting." She paused. "But he did swear me to secrecy. If Krycek finds out he's let this out, the trust between them could be seriously damaged."

She turned to look at the clock. "Are you hungry, Mulder?"

He grinned. "Looking at you this way, always."

She gave him the mildly disapproving look a librarian might over a pair of reading glasses. "Food, Mulder. We never ate dinner. I don't know about you, but I'm hungry." She paused. "I can scramble some eggs. And there's fruit in the fridge."

"And for dessert?" he said, reaching out and wrapping an arm around her, pulling her up on top of him. One of her legs ended up between his, the pressure of it hitting just the right places. He offered what he was sure must be a dopey grin.

"Dessert is good." She pressed a kiss against his forehead and tugged against him until he let her go.

"We could have dessert first," he said as she disappeared into the bathroom.

The door closed. He reached down to rearrange things and pictured Scully the way she'd been when they'd finished, loose and beautiful, flushed from exertion.

And then another, much less pleasant thought. Krycek involved in the Russian project explained why he'd been so chummy with the camp commander. It was the deception that stung, maybe even more now than before: Krycek guiding them, acting like he'd never been in the area before, like he was a novice caught up in the adventure. The same way he'd presented himself as a new green agent eager to learn. Worthy of trust.

Apparently Krycek was never a novice. At anything. But what did that mean now?

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**10:43 p.m.**

"Wake up, please."

There was a shaking against the girl's shoulder.

She stirred. It was Four's voice.

"Please. Wake up."

She blinked and opened her eyes. It was dark in the room. The only light was from the small lamp on the bedside table, which filled the room with shadows.

"This is important," he said, "and it cannot wait any longer." He sat down on the wooden chair beside the bed.

She blinked again. Her head was thick with sleep... or possibly with the fuzz Four had sent into it.

"I'm sorry this is difficult," Four said, his voice calm and smooth but very earnest, "but you must understand. There is no way to explain all of it, but your body has been"--he searched for the right word--"modified by a group that does not have your best interest at heart. When I retrieved you, I sealed that portion of your mind that you'd been using in order to keep them from knowing you're alive. If they can hear your mind, they'll be able trace you, and if they do, we will not be able to help you, or your kind. None of us will survive.

"I didn't realize at first," he went on, "that you had this ability to read the minds of others, and that you would begin to gather information again as you have. Until I can find a way to disable their link to you, I must seal you completely. This is something I've never attempted before, and it's quite possible that when you are unsealed, you will have no memory even of this short period. I'm sorry."

He stopped. The girl noticed that her heart was racing.

Four stretched his hand out above her. She flinched.

He hesitated. After a moment his hand came down.

"Do you have questions I can answer?"

"The man," she said, her voice dry and strange, almost unrecognizable. "Who is the man?" When was the last time she'd used it?

"He is one who has taken a difficult road to learn much. You helped him when he was in need. He cares a great deal about you."

"Is he alive?"

"Yes."

"How will I find him if I don't remember anything?"

"I'm sorry," he said.

His hand stretched out above her and the now-familiar fog invaded her mind, vaporous at first, then thicker and thicker until she was encased in solid whiteness.


	5. Chapter 5

**Sunday, 30 May 1999**   
**Longmont, Colorado**   
**2:10 a.m.**

"Alex?"

The living room was dark but Carrie could see the outline of her guest in the armchair, leaning forward, head in hand. She took a step toward him and paused.

"I don't mean to crowd you, Alex. I just want to make sure everything's okay."

He looked up but didn't turn toward her. "Just... got a headful of stuff to figure out. Nothing that's likely to have an easy answer."

She waited, but he said nothing more.

"Well, I'll go unless you'd rather have someone to sort things out with." She turned and started back toward the door to the hallway.

"No, stick around."

She paused, then turned back and went to the sofa where she curled up, feet tucked beside her.

"Some of that data we should be getting," he started, "it's... You know how I said someone saved my life, when I had that reaction to a change in my pain meds?"

"I remember, yes."

"It was her. She died Tuesday." His voice was dry, husky. "It was--"

Silence. Carrie scanned the darkened room. A sliver of moonlight lit the carpet near the east window, beyond the piano.

She waited, mouth slightly open. There was an art to dealing with men and emotion, a need not to push, but at the same time to be able to offer help.

"She took care of me for three weeks after... after I got this other wound. It was no picnic--you know, the pain and... trying to work your way back to normal. But she was a big help." He paused. "Okay, understatement."

"Sounds like one of those intense experiences."

"Yeah." He sniffed in a breath. "By the end it'd gotten pretty damn personal."

"I'm so sorry, Alex. Is this the person that you said seemed to just shut down?"

"Yeah."

She waited.

"There's more. A lot more," he said. "But it's not likely to make much sense now. Maybe whatever data they send us will help." He glanced up, at a random streak of light on the ceiling. "Figured I ought to tell you this much. You probably already knew something was up."

She nodded. "I suspected there was something. Mom radar, I guess. Not that I want to pry, but it doesn't seem to have an 'off' switch. Once you've activated it, it never goes off."

"No, it's... it's a good thing, mom radar."

The room fell silent. He seemed to have finished what he needed to say. After a moment she got up. She rested a hand on his shoulder briefly as she passed his chair, then moved away.

"Maybe it's none of my business," his voice came as she neared the doorway, "but this thing with Tyler... I've seen the way you two connect. He needs to have that time to come see you. Camp--sure, that can be a good thing. But it's not a substitute for somebody you can really count on."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Longmont, Colorado**   
**2:25 a.m.**

Krycek leaned back in the chair and brought the footrest up.

At least the basic fact of Tracy was one little weight he didn't have to carry now, though it had already been replaced by what had happened a few hours earlier.

If it was real. if it wasn't just a product of his need for there still to be some evidence of her. Which in itself was crazy. Dead was dead.

But around 10:45 he'd felt something--a cry, a reaching out. It had felt the way it had when she'd been in the hospital--not when she'd first collapsed, when she was still coherent and able to communicate, but later, when it felt like she was beyond thought but leaning, needing his support.

Though maybe the impressions that had come to him then had been his imagination, too. After all, last Christmas Eve he thought he saw the ghost of Andrei in his room, toasting him with a glass of orange Stoli.

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Scully's apartment**   
**Georgetown, Washington D.C.**   
**2:34 a.m.**

Moving carefully, Mulder slipped out of the bed and made his way to the living room in the dark. The annoying enigma of Alex Krycek wasn't letting him sleep. Granted, he and Scully had gone to bed early, which probably had something to do with his being awake enough now for Krycek's inconsistencies--or possibly just the gaps in his own knowledge of the guy--to nudge open the door to his conscious mind. And now the profiler in him wanted to work out--to pump facts, run the obstacle course between what he knew and what might be true, sprint to the finish line where the prize--the actual truth about the man--sat waiting to be claimed.

Not that what he had--the e-mails Krycek had sent recently and the file box of clippings and pictures Frohike had picked up in Smoky's apartment--were going to do the whole trick. But they were what he had in hand, and a place to start.

He reached out in the shadows for the lamp beside the couch, felt his way up the base to the switch and turned it on. Soft light illuminated the area. Going to the closet, he retrieved the file box and returned to sit down. The box itself was the older metal kind, and not a particularly high-quality piece. He pushed the latch and opened the top. A musty smell came from it.

Inside, there were no dividers. Mulder took a handful of papers from the front and set them on his lap. They appeared to be a series of news clippings: one about D-Day, the Nixon Watergate operation, the 1976 Israeli hostage raid at Entebbe, another about the Russian war in Afghanistan...

Mulder paused. Something in the accompanying photo, of a group of Russian soldiers on a truck, caught his eye. He held it closer to the light. Unless he was mistaken, the third man from the left was Krycek.

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**6:03 a.m.**

Four withdrew his hand from where it had hovered above the female's head.

"Wake up, please," he said.

The eyelids fluttered, and finally the female's eyes opened. There was no reaction, either positive or negative, that he could detect. If she still had any recall of the events of last night, no doubt she'd be looking at him with some measure of trepidation now, but he saw nothing akin to that... or to any other expression or emotion.

He took her wrist carefully and held up the test photograph with the other hand. There was no reaction, no tensing or pulling away. No interior turmoil. All indications were that the sealing had worked.

He set the girl's arm back on the bed, rose from the chair and slipped the photograph into the small drawer in the bedside table. Pausing, he looked back at his patient.

"You may rest now. Close your eyes."

The girl's eyes closed.

Four went out. He found Eighteen in the living room, hanging damp laundry on wooden drying racks. Early morning light poured in through the east windows, flooding the nearly-bare room with brightness. They'd felt it best not to use the clotheslines outside, where neighbors might see and remember them.

"It should be warmer today than yesterday," Four said by way of greeting. "The heat will help your clothes dry quickly." He waited for her to look up. "As far as I can tell, the sealing has worked. We should start packing today. Six's message could come as early as tomorrow, if our efforts have been successful."

"Your efforts," she said.

"Yes. And then we can begin our journey, move closer incrementally and test at each stopping point to make sure no sign of her is being picked up."

"And our ultimate destination?"

"Close to the area. Approximately 50 miles away. I have the use of a small cottage in a town called Carmena. The location is secluded. From there, we'll work carefully, step by step, to return her to a functional state."

"And if you don't succeed?"

"This is new territory. There are no guarantees. But much could depend on the outcome. I'll do my utmost."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Scully's apartment**   
**Georgetown, Washington D.C.**   
**7:12 a.m.**

"Take a look at this, Scully," Mulder said, holding up a newspaper clipping on the top of a stack on the coffee table.

She'd appeared, drowsy-eyed, in the doorway twenty minutes earlier, wondering where he was. Now she stood beside him wrapped in a soft blue robe, nursing a cup of coffee. She squinted at the yellowed newsprint he held out and sat down beside him.

"What is it?"

"Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. Notice anything?"

She stared at the image. "That isn't... Is that... Krycek?"

"Sure looks like it to me.  I wanted to see whether you thought so, too, or if I was just imagining things. Look here, at what he's carrying."

"A rifle."

"Not an standard infantry rifle. It's a Dragunov, a sniper rifle. See the open area in the stock?"

She nodded. The middle of the wooden stock was open, as if it were one large handle. "So Krycek was a sniper with the Russian military?"

"The other day he said something about Vanek in one of his e-mails, about how the attitudes of the society she grew up in had shaped her, but he was using some pretty personal terms to describe it."

"Like what?"

"Saying that you learn pretty quickly not to trust anyone, because everyone is willing and ready to inform on you."

Scully frowned and set the clipping aside. "If Cancer Man actually sent him to Russia, if he grew up there, that in itself would lead to an understandable lack of trust. But do we know whether that's actually the case?"

Mulder handed her a photo from a smaller pile. The crease-lined picture showed three small boys of about five years old dressed in mismatched clothing. The two in the background were blond with distinctly Slavic faces. In front of them was a dark-haired boy with a rough-and-tumble look, familiar features and the hint of something above one eyebrow that might have been a bruise. Scully turned the picture over. There was a notation in Cyrillic and a year, 1972.

"If this is him," she said, "that would mean he was born around... 1967. Which fits the timeline."

"Two years after Samantha," he said.

"Mulder, I..." Her mouth sat half open. "If this is true... Can you imagine what it would be like to grow up in a place like that, away from any family, and then find out you didn't even belong there, that you'd been sent there deliberately?"

"I know," he said, and caught his lower lip between his teeth. He let out a sigh. "I've been thinking about that for hours now. Makes you wonder why he didn't shoot Smoky years ago."

Scully glanced up at him and frowned. "How long have you been out here?"

"About the last five hours."

"Looking through the box?"

"And going through his e-mails."

"What else did you find in here?"

"A picture of Diana as a little girl, with a woman I assume is probably her mother."

"Anyone we'd recognize?"

He shook his head. "There were a couple more pictures of Krycek, one of Diana when she graduated from college, it looks like. Just one of Jeffrey Spender, when he was a little kid, maybe seven or eight." He reached for a picture on the table. "And this."

She took it, a picture of the Mulder family on the lawn outside the Quonochontaug house, with Cancer Man. Water skis were lined up on the grass. Everyone was wearing swim suits.

"He has an awfully big smile on his face," she said.

"Maybe he's thinking about how badly he's screwing my dad over. Or maybe the whole family. Which reminds me," he said. "I wonder whether anyone has claimed the son of a bitch's body."

"I don't know," she said, taking a sip from her coffee cup. "I can ask Skinner tomorrow."

"What are you doing this week, by the way?"

"I believe tomorrow we'll be writing up our report from the Owensburg trip. After that"--she shrugged--"I'm not sure. Why? Did you have something in mind?"

"I was just thinking about the people Tracy was living with--her aunt and uncle. I'd like to talk to them." He stood. "As far as that goes, we owe them a visit to let them know their niece has died."

"Do we know where they are, how to contact them?"

"No. But Krycek may. He went there with her last week."

"Have you written to him about it?"

"Not yet," he said. "I was going to do that now."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: topaz@rift.net_   
_From: spooky@quick.net_   
_We're thinking it could be useful to pay Tracy's aunt and uncle a visit, but don't know how to contact them. You mentioned going there with her, so I assume you know how we can connect with them?_

_Had a friend go through Smoky's place on I Street. We came away with Vanek's printouts and a file box with an odd collection of pictures and news clippings. There was a newspaper article--1985--with a picture of a group of Russian soldiers in Afghanistan. One of them looked like you. Were you there? Also a photo of three small boys, one of whom looked like it could possibly be you, with Cyrillic writing on the back and the date 1972. Can you enlighten me?_

_-M_

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Longmont, Colorado**   
**8:10 a.m.**

Krycek stared at the computer screen. His hand clenched, unclenched and then clenched again.

"Sure, Mulder," he said under his breath. "I can enlighten you. The question is why should I?"

In his last mail he'd asked for data--Vanek's and whatever they might have on Tracy--but Mulder didn't seem to be offering. Sure, maybe it was just a glitch--extenuating circumstances or whatever. But it was hard to beat back the creeping suspicion that maybe his efforts at the Reston house had only bought him a cheap honeymoon with Mulder, and that the magic was already starting to wear off.

How much was he going to have to put out before Mulder got it through his thick skull that they were both on the same side, both gunning for exactly the same goal, and that it was going to take both of them working together to have any chance at all against Purity? He'd lost an arm to get Mulder vaccinated against the Oil; he'd taken a bullet saving Mulder's and Scully's lives six days ago. What else was it going to take?

Krycek stood up, went to the window and pushed out a sharp breath that clouded the glass in front of him. He'd rather be somewhere he could kick something, but he was in Carrie's bedroom. He really needed to pick up a laptop of his own so he didn't have to be getting in her way and asking to use her computer several times a day.

Loosen up, Aleksei.

Reluctantly he closed his eyes, waited, opened them again and refocused on the scene outside the window. The landscape was bright, the sky a deep blue with a scattering of white clouds strewn above the flatness toward the east. Maybe he was overreacting. The part about Tracy, anyway, was something he should give them. Somebody definitely needed to find out what the aunt and uncle knew, but it sounded as if Mulder didn't have a clue about the kind of relationship she'd had with them. Then there was the matter of their visit to the little house in the valley. For her sake, he needed to warn Mulder not to mention it. It was private, between the two of them, something she never would have wanted Nathan to know about.

_To: spooky@quick.net_   
_From: topaz@rift.net_   
_I don't have an address for her relatives. We took a back road to the house she used to live in, a second house on the property; they never knew we were there, and I know she'd like to keep it that way. She didn't really get along with the uncle and aunt. Partly they didn't understand her, but the other part had to do with her mother's death and the fact that the uncle hauled her away within an hour or so and never let her come back, or go through any of her mom's things. Even nailed the windows shut to keep her out. So--makes sense--the whole thing ate a hole in her and she felt like she had to come to terms with what happened that day, which is why we went there. All I know is their names are Nathan and Jean, and that they've got a farm. Elleryville sounds small enough that even that much should get you the info you need._

_So the old man kept pictures. Well, well._

_Yeah, those are probably me, so I guess now you get Chapter 1 of the sordid little story of my life. He took me to Russia as an infant and stashed me in an institution for the inconvenient bastard spawn of high officials. Figured if I survived growing up, I might be useful to him. The stint in Afghanistan was four months; he wanted me to have field experience but not get killed in the process. You know, it sucks to be the dirty little secret your mother's husband doesn't want living under his nice, comfortable roof._

_What about Vanek's printouts and whatever hospital data you've got on Tracy? I've got someone here willing and eager to help figure things out._

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Scully's apartment**   
**Georgetown, Washington D.C.**   
**10:03 a.m.**

"Yes. Thank you, sir." Scully switched off the phone and continued writing on the pad of paper. Finally she looked up.

"You get what we need?" Mulder asked.

"Yes. Their names are Nathan and Jean Meyer. 211 Franklin Mill Road in Elleryville."

"How long will it take us to get there?"

"Probably a little over three hours." She paused. "I'll drive and you can sleep on the way. It looks like you're ready to doze off already."

He shrugged. "I thought about going back to bed, but it's hard to stop thinking after you see all this." He gestured at the papers and photos scattered across the coffee table.

"I have some laundry to run, but I should be ready to go in about an hour."

"Sounds good."

Mulder flipped open his laptop, waited for the screen to come to life and clicked on Krycek's mail again. He hadn't told Scully about the second part, he wasn't quite sure why. Maybe because reading it had been like a grenade going off and he was still tangled in the shock of it. Krycek... Alex--someday he was going to have to learn to say it... had been taken to Russia and raised in an institution, even sent to war to gain experience. If he didn't know where he'd come from, it wouldn't have been as bad, but his comment about Mulder's dad made it sound otherwise.

He tapped on the mail program.

_To: cranesbill@zipmail.com_   
_From: spooky@quick.net_   
_Mom--_   
_I've got a question. I found some pictures of someone who looked like Alex among the papers in a file box we took from Leland's place, pictures indicating he might have been raised in Russia. So I wrote and asked him and he said he was taken there as an infant and raised in an institution. Eventually Leland even had him placed in the Russian army in Afghanistan during the war there. But he said something at the end about Dad not wanting him to live with us, as if that was the reason he was taken away. Was this ever a point of discussion?_

_We're heading for Pennsylvania this afternoon to see what we can find out about Tracy and her background from the relatives she'd been living with. I hope it turns up something we can use going forward._

_-F_

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: spooky@quick.net_   
_From: cranesbill@zipmail.com_   
_Dear Fox--_   
_I have to say that your message shook me almost as much as receiving the laptop the other day and not knowing the circumstances. There was no discussion of the pregnancy whatsoever with your father. At that point, we managed to somehow coexist in the same house, but that was the extent of our contact. Granted, he would not have approved keeping the child, but even that subject was never discussed, as Leland had already assured me he would take care of placing the infant. I know customs have changed, but at the time this is the way things were done. Unexpected pregnancies happened just as they do now, and inconvenient offspring were routinely placed for adoption just like the children of unwed mothers, who were usually shuffled off to some distant relative until the shameful event had occurred. It was all very hush-hush._

_When Alex came here to see me, he mentioned only that he'd been raised to do his father's bidding, but he said nothing about the details of his life. And the fact that he was given the impression that he wasn't welcome here because of your father seems like the most vile sort of propaganda to press upon a young boy. Such manipulation of a child is nothing short of despicable, and no doubt affected Alex's views as he grew up. I can only say that I'm left fuming, and if Leland weren't already dead, I'd be tempted to despatch him myself._

_I hope your trip is successful. I realize I was only with Tracy for a short time, but she was a lovely girl, wise for her age and quite obviously a much-appreciated light in Alex's life._

_-Mom_

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: topaz@rift.net_   
_From: spooky@quick.net_   
_We've got Tracy's uncle's information and will be going there this afternoon. Thanks for the heads-up about their strained relationship. I'll ask to see her house and just say we're looking for whatever evidence we can find about her and her mother. Won't mention that you two were there._

_Scully was out yesterday afternoon visiting her mother and hasn't had a chance to go through Vanek's printouts yet, but I'll see about making copies for you once she does, assuming they actually tell us anything. I've left a message for the doctor in Owensburg to have him send me whatever he's got on Tracy, after which we can scan and send them to you. If everything has disappeared, I'll have Scully write up whatever she can remember about Tracy's condition and treatment._

_Still trying to wrap my mind around the reality of those pictures and what you said about growing up in Russia. For what it's worth, Mom said there were never any discussions with my dad about you, so if it was a case of Smoky telling you my dad was the reason you ended up where you did, it was another one of his lies meant to push your buttons, and to shift responsibility off himself while he was at it. Convenient--for him._

_-M_

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Longmont, Colorado**   
**10:42 a.m.**

Carrie paused and looked up. The two garden beds were nearly half weeded now. She'd come out ten minutes earlier to find Alex sitting on the edge of one bed, hard at work. Correction: It wasn't hard work but steady activity, which was exactly the kind of thing he needed.

"What are you going to plant here?" he said, looking up suddenly, breaking the silence they'd been working in.

She shrugged. "I don't know yet. But I guess I'd better decide, right? I think they still have those little vegetable starts at the nurseries. Squash, I guess. Tomatoes. Lettuce." She paused and smiled. "Green beans. Those were always Ty's favorites."

"Better get some in then. He'd like that, if you can get him to come."

Carrie set down the trowel she'd been using. "What did you mean last night? What you said about Ty?"

He looked up from his work. "Guess it really stood out to me last time, the way you guys were a team." He flashed a bitter smile. "Maybe because it was like nothing I'd ever seen. Hell, I grew up in an institution. No parents, just people paid--barely--to put up with you." His expression tightened. "Didn't meet my mother until about five weeks ago."

"Wow." She waited. "How did that go?"

His jaw set. "Pretty rough. Felt like freefalling." His words were clipped, short. "Then we connected again about a week ago. Another one of those intense things. We worked together--" There was a momentary smile. "Came out alive. Which is what counts."

Carrie had a sudden vision of mafia families, a scenario her patient somehow didn't seem to fit, though bits and pieces of things he'd mentioned certainly seemed to lean in that direction.

"Your ex," he said. "Is he a manipulator?" He tugged out a deep-rooted weed and tossed it into the pile of wilted greens from the day before.

She frowned. "Why do you ask?"

"Seen my share of it. Gets easy to recognize after a while."

"And you think you're seeing a red flag here?"

"Camp's going to be better for Tyler than you are, is that what he's telling you... in so many words?" He raised his eyebrows. "So if you want Tyler to come home, you're doing something to hurt him?"

"I hadn't thought about it that way."

He shrugged. "I could be out in left field; I don't know the guy. But take a look back. Think about it."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Elleryville, Pennsylvania**   
**3:04 p.m.**

"This looks like it," Scully said, pulling into a gravel driveway leading up a gentle incline to an old-fashioned two-story green farmhouse. Behind the house, the property steepened into a hill.

"And not a minute too soon," Mulder said, grimacing. "My ass is tired of sitting."

"At least we know they're home," she said. "Nathan seemed disturbed once I mentioned Tracy, but at least he's only had a few minutes to speculate."

"Aaaand, the show's on." Mulder nodded toward the house. "I see them at the front window."

"This type of call is never easy." She paused and pursed her lips. Reluctantly her hands left the steering wheel and she opened the driver's door.

"No. But we need whatever information we can get. Right now everything we've got on Tracy adds up to a big goose egg." He got out, closed the car door and followed Scully up the walkway to the house where a tanned, silver-haired man in overalls and a brown-haired woman waited at the open front door.

"Mr. and Mrs. Meyer, I'm Special Agent Dana Scully and this is my associate, Fox Mulder."

Mulder winced at his lack of title, but he forced a smile, shook the hands offered to him and exchanged greetings.

"Come in," Nathan Meyer said. "You said this is about Tracy. Do you know where she is? She hasn't gotten into some sort of trouble, has she?"

"Why would you ask that, sir?" Scully asked, stepping over the threshold.

"Well, I guess just that she has a mind of her own," he said, leading the way to a couch and chairs in the high-ceilinged living room. He motioned them to the couch. "And one I admit I've never had much understanding of." He shook his head. "She just took off and ran, about a month ago. Now her high school class has graduated and she doesn't have that diploma, and who knows where she is or what she's doing." He sat down in one of the armchairs. "But I imagine you do, and that's why you're here."

"Yes, sir." Scully drew in a long breath. "We're very sorry to have to tell you this, but your niece passed away on Tuesday."

Mulder watched a muscle in her jaw twitch, waiting for the inevitable reaction.

"What? What do you mean?" Nathan's mouth sat open. "That's not pos--" From somewhere beyond the room, a clock ticked loudly into the silence. Eventually he swallowed. "What on earth happened?" He swiped a hand across his forehead. "And why is the FBI mixed up in this?"

Beside him, his wife reached for his hand.

"She had gotten herself mixed up in something," Scully said, "in a manner of speaking. But I can assure you it's not because of anything she did. She was sent to us by an acquaintance, to ensure her safety. She'd been with us since the Thursday before last. She seemed fine until last Sunday, when she experienced some type of seizure. She was taken to the hospital and we worked as hard as we could, the local doctor and myself, but she never regained consciousness. Her condition deteriorated extremely rapidly."

"Are you a doctor?"

"Yes sir." Scully paused. "We weren't able to determine what was causing her condition and"--she pressed her lips together and looked down briefly--"she slipped away Tuesday morning just before noon."

Silence took over the room. Mulder glanced through a doorway that led into the kitchen. Sunlight brightened a patch of tile on the counter below a window.

"Why weren't we notified sooner?" Nathan's wife asked after a moment. Her eyes were vacant, her voice dry.

"It was only afterward, Mrs. Meyer, that we found out she had family. She'd mentioned Elleryville and your first names to a mutual acquaintance. It wasn't difficult to locate you once we contacted local authorities." She paused. "We're very sorry for your loss."

Mulder nodded agreement.

"She just took off," Nathan said to nobody in particular. He looked down, let out a heavy sigh, then shook his head slowly. "What was I supposed to do?"

"So I suppose... Dear God." Jean Meyer blinked back the water pooling in her eyes. "Her body. I guess we'll have to make arrangements for--"

Scully cleared her throat. "One of the reasons we're here, Mr. and Mrs. Meyer, is that there is no body. When the doctor went back to check the next morning, it was gone. We believe"--she formed the words carefully--"that Tracy may have been involved, against her will or foreknowledge, in a larger matter we've been investigating. More lives may be at stake. That's why we're here. It's important that you tell us all you can about Tracy's background."

Nathan Meyer looked up at the crown molding. The muscles in his neck tightened. He sighed and looked back at Scully. "Does this have anything to do with her father?"

Mulder leaned forward in his chair. "What would make you say that, sir?"

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Longmont, Colorado**   
**3:07 p.m.**

The traffic light turned green and Carrie pressed the accelerator. "Walking might do you good," she said, glancing over at her passenger, who was reclined in the seat beside her. "We have a number of great trails here in town."

"Sounds nice," he said, "but too public. Nobody should see us together. Don't want to leave here knowing someone could go after you to try to get to me."

Carrie signaled and turned right. "When my dad died, all I wanted to do was jog. I don't know how many miles I went that first month or so. It was the only thing that made sense at the time."

Alex was looking out the passenger window. She watched his Adam's apple dip.

"If you'd like to walk someplace more secluded, there are trails up in the mountains not all that far away. One place I know of has a good half-mile of fairly flat trail along a stream, with trees around it. Pretty nice for the dry side of the Rockies." She paused. "This time of year, there are probably wildflowers up there, too."

After a moment he turned toward her. "How far?"

"Less than twenty miles. Probably forty-five minutes." She signaled again and turned onto her own street. "We could drop off your laptop"--she nodded toward the package between his knees--"and grab some trail mix and water."

He nodded. "Okay."

Carrie eased onto the brake and turned into her driveway. The chance to move might not keep him afloat the way it had her, but it was worth a try. His case, it had become very clear, was far from just a matter of infection and damaged flesh, and more than antibiotics and rest would be needed to heal him.

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Elleryville, Pennsylvania**   
**3:15 p.m.**

"I admit I was never a big fan of the man. Well, I didn't dislike Keith. I guess we just moved in different directions. He'd just gotten his Ph.D. when Shirley met him and I guess I wondered if she weren't in love with that just as much as him."

Nathan paused. "I don't mean she was gold-digging or anything; she was never that kind of person. I guess she was just... you know, impressed by him knowing so much. I think he loved her. He did love her..." He stared at the coffee table in front of him. "That was one of the things that made it so strange when she came back. She seemed to be so vague about the details of what happened. If you asked her about it she'd just shrug it off, and she'd never been one to shrug off anything. She was the one, when we were little, to come home with birds fallen out of trees and try to nurse them back to health. I know what happened to Keith was sudden, and I know... It hurt her. It did. And Tracy, she was kind of a little echo of her mother, quiet and clingy at first. I figured they were just trying to get past it the best they could, so I finished off the building in the back valley and left 'em pretty much to themselves."

"Did your sister have some kind of employment in the area?" Mulder asked.

"There's not much work in a place like this--town this size, pretty much out in the middle of nowhere." Nathan shrugged. "She had some kind of settlement that had to do with Keith's accident. It wouldn't have been enough to support her anywhere else, but it wasn't costing me anything, the two of them being out there, so I didn't charge her any rent. So she had enough to get by on. Tracy was getting a little from Social Security because her papa was gone."

"And your sister's illness?" Scully said.

Nathan stiffened slightly. Finally he sagged back against the sofa cushions.

"Bad as it was for Shirley, it pretty near turned into a fiasco afterward for Jean and me." He glanced at his wife, whose mouth tightened, and took a deep breath. "She wanted to be left alone. I took her to the doctor once but she didn't really want to go and she came out all spooked." He shook his head. "This is our local guy; I've known him all my life. Everybody in this town does. I can't think of anyone more trustworthy. He wanted to do some tests but she wouldn't have any of it. Just went back home, and later when things started going downhill she had Tracy taking care of her. I tried to say something, but Tracy, she wanted to be there with her mom. They were like... carrots." He looked up. "Ever grow carrots?"

Scully shook her head.

"Sometimes when they seed real close to each other, they twine together as they grow--end up like a braid. They were like that, the two of them. Anyway, Shirley wrote me this letter..."

"Letter?" Scully leaned forward.

"About how she wanted to be left alone, begging me not to step in and interfere." He swallowed. "When she died, we had a pretty bit of explaining to do to law enforcement--you know, about why we hadn't taken her to the hospital. Luckily these are all people we know, who know us, and Tracy was sixteen going on seventeen; nobody was going to try to make any kind of point by charging her with anything." He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and studied the carpet, then looked up. "I still have the letter--Shirley's letter--if you want to see it."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: topaz@rift.net_   
_From: cranesbill@zipmail.com_   
_Dear Alex--_   
_I hope this reaches you. Fox says you two have been in communication. I received a package the other day and when I opened it and found it was my laptop, immediately I was afraid that something had happened to you. So I was extremely relieved to hear that you've reached a doctor who can help you._

_Having heard from Fox a little about your upbringing in Russia, I can only say that I feel more ashamed than I ever imagined possible to have been a party to what happened to you, and I can see now, even more than before, how very difficult it must have been for you to come to my house that day, and how it must have hurt you every day of your life to know that someone had been thoughtless enough to relinquish you to such an existence. Although there is no possible way to make up for what you have gone through, please know that I am so very sorry for my part in it._

_I can't think of any way I might be useful to you at this point, but please know that I am ready and willing to help you in any way possible if the need or opportunity arises. And though what we all went through last week was terrifying, I so appreciate the support you gave me while events were unfolding, and the chance we had to act together, albeit briefly._

_You continue in my thoughts, as does Tracy._

_-M_

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Elleryville, Pennsylvania**   
**3:22 p.m.**

"There were two letters, actually," Nathan Meyer said, returning from the shadowed hallway into the bright afternoon light coming through the surrounding tall windows. He went up to Scully and handed her a piece of green stationery. Mulder leaned in closer to read.  
  
 _To whom it may concern,_  
 _I am aware that my health is failing but I want to make clear that it is my conscious choice after much thought not to seek medical treatment for this condition. I have requested of my brother Nathan that he please respect my wishes, including that of not notifying anyone outside the immediate family of my status. I wish to handle this in the way that seems most appropriate to me, whether or not others may understand my position or the reasoning behind it. Few lives are as discouraging to live as the one directed from somewhere outside yourself. I make this statement at my own initiative and of my own free will._  
 _-Shirley B. Acres_  
  
"The date on this?" Mulder asked, pointing to the paper.

"It was about... about eight months before she passed away, so likely August of '97." He paused, fingering the other piece of paper he held. "That"--he nodded toward the letter in Scully's hand--"was intended for me to show to whoever might have legitimate questions. This other one she asked me not to show anybody. But I think now, with what's happened to Tracy... Jesus." He sighed and looked away. After a moment he turned back to his visitors. "Maybe this will mean something to you. I didn't understand what she was talking about." He offered the paper to Scully.  
  
 _Dear Nathan,  
I want to say that I appreciate what you've done for me, and your concern. I can't explain what it is that scared me so badly yesterday in that office. It's just a feeling, but it's so strong I can't ignore it. There are things I don't remember about California, as I'm sure has been apparent to you, but I know I went through several surgeries out there and I can't do that again. You have to trust me when I say this. It isn't only for myself, but for Tracy's sake that I do this. I can't explain it, but I know somehow that if my condition is looked into, it could lead to a chain of events that would expose her to harm. I realize all this sounds crazy, and I have no way to back it up with concrete evidence. It's just a sense I have and you know I've had these intuitions about things all my life._

 _Please take me seriously when I say this. I don't mean to make any trouble for you, as I don't for my dear, faithful daughter. We've talked about what's happening to me and she assured me she wants to be here. But if there should come a point where I become a burden to her, we'll defer to your judgment about placement for myself and for her. I know we haven't seen eye to eye on some things for a long while, but I appreciate the concern you've always had for me. Please assist me again at this crucial time. I appreciate it more than I can say._  
                                                                                                 _Love,_  
 _Shirley_

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Foothills of the Front Range, Colorado**   
**3:50 p.m.**

Krycek made his way toward the bend in the trail where he'd left Carrie. She'd been right. Walking had been good--motion was good--and the scenery had offered his mind a focus away from the constant low-grade nausea the meds produced. Just to move and not think seemed better than anything else he'd done in the last few days.

He looked up: scattered trees on the otherwise-barren slopes of the narrow canyon, a slash of sun and shadow running diagonally across them. The roar of rushing water to the right, where a wandering stand of pines and the occasional cluster of fir trees sheltered the length of a boulder-lined creek. The sweet scent of warm tree needles filled the air.

"How was it?" Carrie asked when he'd returned to the spot beside the creek where she was waiting out of sight. She had a handful of pebbles and was skipping them across the water.

"Good." He eased himself onto a rock and sat. "Gets you out of your head for a while."

"Sorry about that remark I made about wearing a hat and a mustache." To disguise herself, so they wouldn't be seen together. "I didn't mean to make light of the situation."

He gave a shrug. "Figured as much."

"Just how much danger am I actually in? I was just thinking that if Tyler comes home--" She looked up, a question in her expression.

"Best case scenario, you're fine. The old man... okay, my father--" The words tasted bitter, wrong in every possible way. "Anyway, he's out of the picture. He would've been the worst. The group he was with..." He sighed. "Depends on what information they think I have and how desperate they are to get it."

"And do you have this kind of information they'd be looking for?"

"Not yet. I think they figure I've got more sources than I do." He picked up a pebble from the sandy ground in front of him and tossed it into the rushing water. "When I go, I'll keep in touch. You notice anything suspicious, you let me know right away. I'll give you my brother's contact info, too. He's FBI... Well, he's out at the moment, but his partner's still in. They'll help you."

She tried for a smile.

"Don't want to mess things up for you here. That's why I'm being as careful as I can."

She turned toward the creek. The relentless flow--the rush and bubble and leaping of water--was almost hypnotizing. Krycek glanced up to where shafts of sunlight sliced between tree branches. Even if he took every precaution and the old men never caught wind of where he was, Carrie was going to be left worrying. Especially if Tyler came home.

"I've been thinking about what you said last night," she said, turning to face him now. "About Ron. I guess I've always tried to be fair and even-tempered, so I've looked at what I've done sometimes as just my 'giving' in the give-and-take of a relationship." She rolled a pebble from one hand to the other, back and forth, and finally tossed it into the bubbling water. "But he did do that with Tyler, kept impressing me with how much of an advantage Ty would have by living out there with him." She looked up at him. "How much I'd be holding him back by keeping him here."

"Not how much Tyler'd lose out on, but how much you'd be making him lose."

She nodded. "It's subtle, the way he framed it."

"The experienced ones are. They're slick. They've got it all worked out ahead of time. They hook you right at the start and then they just reel you in." He pushed at the sandy dirt in front of him with the toe of one shoe. "You know, Tyler hesitating about making a decision on what to do--it could be that he's afraid to tell his dad he wants to come here. He's just a kid; by himself he doesn't have much leverage, especially when he's on Dad's turf. Hard to tell Dad what he doesn't want to hear and have to live with the consequences."

"It would be. But what do I do then?"

"Have to think of something." He shrugged. "Just don't give up. You two have something solid. Don't let it go."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Elleryville, Pennsylvania**   
**3:57 p.m.**

"Keith's 'accident', Scully," Mulder said as they followed Nathan's truck over the hill on their way to the little house in the valley. Occasional bits of gravel crunched under their tires.

"Yes, I noticed that right away. And Shirley's letter. It certainly seems to imply that she'd been experimented on by this group." She frowned.

"Do you think her husband had something to do with it, that he was complicit?"

Scully steered left to avoid a pothole. "I don't know, Mulder. It would be the ultimate horror, to find that the one you should be able to trust the most--" She broke off abruptly.

"Tell me about it."   
  
They crested the hill and started a slow descent into a small valley ringed by woods.  
  
"I don't think he helped them intentionally," Mulder said. "When Tracy... just before she collapsed, she was remembering that night--the night her father disappeared. She said he came home and begged her mother to leave. He was warning them."

"And they killed him for it."

"She said there was someone outside the window--" He paused, mouth half open. "You know, Scully, I think Nathan Meyer thinks Keith had something to do with it, though. Maybe he blames Keith for what happened to his sister. I think he may blame Tracy a little for what happened to her. If Shirley hadn't been trying to protect Tracy--"

"Or hadn't believed she was protecting Tracy--"

"...she might have let him get help for her. She might have survived. At least, he'd think she might have."

"Though if she was indeed a victim like Tracy," Scully said, "there was probably nothing anyone could have done for her."

"Yeah, but he doesn't know that."

Scully turned left as the road curved down to a small parking area beside a fenced vegetable garden and a small pump house. Beyond the garden to the left, not far from the back side of the hill, was what looked like a weathered brown barn. She pulled up beside Nathan's truck and glanced over at Mulder. His lower lip was pushed forward as he looked toward the house.

"What is it, Mulder?"

"Just thinking about something Krycek said."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**E. 46th Street, New York City**   
**4 p.m.**

"Sorry to have brought you gentlemen here on a Sunday afternoon," a dry, monotone voice said, "but we may have a problem."

A murmur made its way around the shadowed room.

"What is it?" asked one man.

"The tapes of our colleague's demise in the house in Reston," the broad man said. "We've obtained an unedited copy and reviewed them all. They point out a complication we'd been unaware of."

"And that is?" asked a bearded man.

"Evidently Alex Krycek is the son of Spender and Teena Mulder. Spender took Krycek with him to have him interrogate Mrs. Mulder. And subsequently to kill him with the rest of the family."

Another murmur arose from around the table.

"From watching the progression of the incident," the thin man said, "it became apparent that Krycek had alerted Mulder to Spender's plot. As soon as the Bureau's decoy with the stray dog wanders through the property, Krycek is at the window. Then he immediately consults with Mrs. Mulder, and the two of them proceed to close the ventilation ducts in the room they're in. They knew what was coming. When two canisters of gas are fired into the living room, Krycek pushes Teena Mulder down in an apparent act of protection."

"After the shooting," the broad man continued in his monotone, "Mulder's behavior toward Krycek is uncharacteristically neutral. Krycek himself reaches for Teena Mulder's hand, and she holds it while Scully tends to the wound he's sustained."

"There's mention between them of a woman named Tracy," the thin man continued. "We have no idea who she is, but she seems to have been a point of contact between all of them."

The broad man attempted to clear his throat. "Given the indications on the tape, and the fact that Krycek saved their lives, we feel it's highly likely they're still in contact, exchanging information."

"So you believe they've forged an alliance?" a bearded man said.

"It's very possible. We'd be remiss to ignore the possibility."

"And if they are working together?" a dark-haired man asked. "What sort of alliance would this be? What kind of a threat would they pose to us?"

"Mulder has always wanted to expose us," the broad man said.

"Do you think Krycek would help him to do that? What would be the point? He'd risk bringing colonization down on our heads early."

"Revenge?" offered the silver-haired man. "He's already outside the group of those who will be protected."

"He wiped out our vaccine research once," said the bearded man.

"But not without having an alternative," replied the silver-haired man. "He wanted to be our only source of a working vaccine."

"Perhaps," said the thin man, "Mulder and Krycek hope to form their own resistance to the plan for colonization, using Vanek's vaccine."

The broad man frowned. "Then we must find and crush them both."

The thin man leaned forward in his chair. "But we have no idea where Krycek is. So far our search has turned up nothing."

"If they're in contact," said the silver-haired man, lines creasing his forehead, "what poisons one can poison the other. If we can find a way to drive a wedge between them, it may not matter whether we locate Krycek."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Elleryville, Pennsylvania**   
**4:38 p.m.**

"Anything particular you're looking for?"  
  
Scully looked up at Nathan Meyer from where she sat on the floor beside a bookcase in the living room. "Anything that will give us a hint about her past, Mr. Meyer. Before she came here, mostly." She pulled a second photo album from the shelf.   
  
Mulder appeared from Shirley's room. "Mr. Meyer, are you aware that Tracy had psychic abilities?"   
  
Nathan's eyes widened. One corner of his mouth tightened and he glanced down, studying the geometry of the tiles on the kitchen floor. "I... I knew there was something there. She'd kind of answer questions before you'd asked them." He paused before returning his gaze to Mulder. "Or when she was in school, living with us afterward. There were always rumors around... about her knowing things. But I figured it was just something kids'd made up, that they were teasing her. They did tease her. I guess on top of missing her mother, that would've been rough for her."  
  
"What kind of teasing?" Scully said, looking up.  
  
"Mostly just... I don't know, hazing the new kid." He went to the couch and sat down. "Saying things behind her back when she'd walk into a store or something, so she'd know they were talking about her. There was one girl she was friends with. But a lot of them..." He shook his head. "That's kids, though. You've got to learn to deal with it. If you keep backing down, they keep pushing."  
  
"Did it get worse, then?" Mulder said.  
  
"Bad enough that she left, I guess. I guess that's why she took off." Nathan looked across the room to the window over the kitchen sink and squinted into the light of mid-afternoon.  
  
"Mr. Meyer," Scully turned and cleared her throat. "Were you and your wife aware that Tracy was pregnant?"  
  
Nathan reddened and sighed heavily. "We kind of figured. She used to wear pants a lot, and then she took to getting clothes from the thrift store--dresses, loose things. And she was feeling sick some mornings."  
  
"You never talked to her about it?" Mulder asked.  
  
"Not exactly." He shrugged. "But I don't know who she would've been messing around with. She never did seem interested in boys. She kind of shied away, to tell you the truth. She always took the early bus home after school and she wasn't one to go out nights, wasn't one to ask to go to football games or anything like that."  
  
"We believe"--Scully nodded toward Mulder--"that Tracy wasn't 'messing around' with anyone, sir, but that she was... that she was being used by the people her mother seems to have been so afraid of."  
  
Nathan's brow creased. "What?"  
  
"We don't really have a lot of specifics yet, sir," Mulder said, coming closer. "That's why we're here looking for information. But we believe your sister's fears were justified. Was there any significant period of time about four and a half months ago when you didn't know where she was?"  
  
"You mean"--Nathan counted backward--"the middle of January?"  
  
"Yes," Scully said.  
  
Nathan glanced at Mulder and Scully in turn. "No, she was accounted for, but... there was something strange that happened about then. There was a Thursday I think it was...

"Anyway, I found her wandering out on the ridge. I'd always figured she might try to come back here, and I knew it would only make it harder to adjust to reality in the end. So I'd forbidden her to come here. I went up to her that day... I accused her really, I'm ashamed to say. And I thought at the time she was just bluffing me to get me off her back, but she acted like she didn't know what I was talking about. It didn't made any sense. If she was on her way home, I'd think she just would've gone--taken off the way she did. She runs--" He paused. "Ran. She ran like a deer, all long legs and speed. She could've just taken off. Wouldn't have been the first time. Why wait for me to catch up with her? Why she was just wandering up there, I never could figure out."  
  
"And that was it, sir?" Scully said, settling herself on the couch's end cushion. "That was the only thing that drew your attention?"  
  
Nathan shook his head. "No, that wasn't the end of the oddity. She just seemed real... distant during that weekend and then on Tuesday, we got a call from the school to come pick her up, she was sick. So we did. Jean went, actually, and brought her home and got her settled. Seemed like just the flu or something; I don't think her temperature ever got that high, but when she woke up the next morning she said she didn't have any memory of Jean going to get her the day before. Didn't remember what they'd been working on in her classes for the few days prior. I remember her saying later that she'd gotten bad marks on a couple of quizzes. She spent about a week, then, with her nose in the books, trying to catch herself up." He paused and looked at Mulder. "Does that mean anything to you? What could any of those people from California have wanted with Tracy anyhow?"  
  
"As far as we can tell, this appears to be a rogue group doing genetic experiments. It's possible," Scully said, pausing to press her lips together, "that your niece had already been drawn into their work before she and her mother came here."  
  
"We don't believe," Mulder added, "that it was because of any willful action on her father's part, though. Just before she collapsed, she was telling me about leaving Pasadena. She said she remembered her father coming home worried for their safety, asking her mother take Tracy and go into hiding. Tracy said she remembered noticing someone outside the window, watching. We're concerned that her father's death may not have been an accident."  
  
For a moment Nathan didn't move. Finally he stood and shook his head. "I don't know what to make of all this. It all seems so... crazy." After a moment he nodded toward the door. "I'm going to wait outside if you two don't mind. If you have any more questions, I'll be in the garden."  
  
Scully stood, watched Nathan go out the door and glanced at Mulder, whose jaw was set.   
  
"What?" she said.   
  
He shook his head. "I guess I'm just seeing a lot of something I was on the receiving end of all too often as a kid. He just didn't want to deal with it. With her."  
  
"Mulder, I think he didn't--doesn't--know what to think. What's happened here doesn't fit his sense of reality. Unfortunately, what he's told us doesn't seem to add anything useful to our knowledge. They knew where she was the whole time, even during those few days he describes as 'strange'." She noted her partner's frown. "What, you don't think so?"  
  
"It's the 'strange' part that interests me, Scully."  
  
"Surely you aren't going to suggest that the town experienced a loss of time while she was taken and impregnated."  
  
"A Sleeping Beauty rationale? No, something easier to pull off than that. With the right ingredient."  
  
"And that ingredient would be?"  
  
"A clone."  
  
"You think Tracy was cloned? That she was... replaced here by another for a few days and then returned?"   
  
"It would account for the strange behavior, and her lack of memory of those few days." He bit his lip and glanced up at the ceiling. "Or maybe there's another explanation, maybe even less complicated than a clone."  
  
Scully raised one eyebrow. "A shapeshifter?"  
  
"They already seem to be mixed up in this. It would be convenient, someone who could look like her and then change form and leave with no one the wiser." He came closer and squatted down beside her. "You finding anything in these albums?"  
  
"Not yet, but I'll keep looking. All the pictures seem to be from when they lived here--Shirley and Tracy in the house or garden, someone who must have been a friend of Tracy's, a little girl. Nathan and his wife are in a few of these pictures." She looked up.  
  
Mulder stood. "I think I'm going to take a look upstairs. Let me know if you come across anything."  
  
Scully nodded and watched until he'd disappeared up the stairs. Around her the room fell silent, and she was aware once again of the heat and the close stuffiness of the dusty room. She glanced at the front door and pictured Tracy sanding there in her yellow cotton dress, peering in. What would it have taken to return here after more than a year away to face the memories of such a terrible day? Certainly she didn't appear to have Nathan's tendency to avoid the hard questions.

Or possibly she'd had help in that respect. Krycek had come with her, after all. Which in itself was puzzling. He had nothing obvious to gain from making the trip, especially given the condition he'd been in. And yet he'd made the journey with her, just as he had later, determined to be by her side in Owensburg. The man was a mystery.

Scully let out a sigh. Pushing an errant lock of hair behind her ear, she reached for the next album.

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: che774@telcom.com_   
_From: topaz@rift.net_   
_Just a heads-up that I'm going to have work for you. I need you to dig up whatever you can on a pharmaceutical outfit in Chula Vista, California named Prangen. Specifically looking for info on a clinical trial that included a 3-year-old girl named Emily. Specifics to follow tomorrow. Supposedly the trial was called off at the end of 1997. Place sounds shady, may be a front for hybrid experiments. Also any connection between Prangen and research groups in the Pasadena/L.A. area, especially any having to do with genetics or associated with CalTech._

_Thanks for the info on which laptop to buy. Picked one up today, so I'm connected again._

_-K_

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Elleryville, Pennsylvania**   
**5:17 p.m.**

Nathan Meyer stood inside the fenced garden plot, hands on hips. He turned when he saw Mulder and Scully approaching.

"You two find what you were looking for?"

"We didn't find very much, sir," Scully said, "but we very much appreciate you letting us look."

Mulder held out a small book with a blue and white striped cover. "This diary was in her desk. I was wondering if we could take it. Something in it might give us a lead."

Nathan swiped a hand across his brow and frowned. "Sure. If it'll help you."

"Is there something wrong, sir?" Scully asked, taking a step toward him.

Nathan sighed, though there was something sharp in his eyes. "Just trying to wrap my mind around all this."

Scully glanced around at the overgrown, weedy garden beds. "Sir, did you and your wife use the produce you grew here?"

"No, this was just for Shirley and Tracy. They took care of the whole thing, from planting the seeds right on through harvest. Why?"

"I just thought of something," Scully said. "May we take a few samples of the plants and soil?"

"Yes, but what for?"

"Just being cautious, sir. Often it helps to investigate even avenues that don't seem very likely. I'd like to test their chemical content."

"Seeds are the same ones Jean and I use." Nathan shrugged. "Water's the same."

"Did your sister have any fertilizers she used here?"

"I took them to the house right after she died. Used them in our garden. No sense wasting what can be used."

Scully turned to Mulder. "Could you get me some of those sample bags from the car, Mulder?"

"Yeah, sure." He turned and headed for the parking area.

"If you two don't mind, I'd like to go back to my house. This has been quite the afternoon and I guess my wife and I are going to need a little time to process it."

"I understand, sir."

"If you'll just close that gate when you're done," he said.

"We'll be sure to do that."

Scully bent down over the bed in front of her and pushed through the weeds to get to the soil.

"What was that all about?" Mulder asked, coming up behind her.

"I think Nathan's had about as much bad news as he can process for one afternoon," she said. "Which is understandable. He going back home. He looks drained."

"I think it's more than just shock, Scully. Look at this." He pointed to a weedless spot at the end of the bed. In the dried mud was a distinct human footprint. "What do you think, Scully? About Tracy's size?"

She frowned and looked closer. "Probably, yes."

"There are a few more near the porch. And the bed in her mother's room had been moved and pushed back into place recently. You can see a faint trail in the dust," he said. "It was brushed over, likely Krycek's work; he wouldn't be one to want to leave any traces of their visit. But at one point she must have gone out barefoot--"

"Which seems like something she might do."

"I think Nathan noticed the prints, Scully. I think he knows exactly whose they are."

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

**Longmont, Colorado**   
**8:17 p.m.**

Krycek sat facing the last of the day's sunlight, which had deepened until now it tinted the patio furniture in shades of peach and raspberry. There was only a small corner of the bed left to weed. His fingers reached back into the warm, loose soil.

At first he thought he'd done nothing more than walk without thinking, a few hours earlier in the mountains, but he could see now that it wasn't true. Some part of him had been narrating to her the whole time, a kind of wordless note-taking. Not focused, conscious talking, as if she were actually somewhere to be able to hear him. Maybe like a diary you'd keep, pretending you were writing to someone who in the end was never going to read what you'd written. And for some reason, doing it hadn't sent up red flags warning him that he must be losing it, that it was crazy to be narrating anything to a dead girl. Instead, there'd been a kind of peace to it, like the momentary cocoon he'd woken to in her room that morning over a week ago, sunlight spilling through the window onto the two of them on the sheets, Tracy wrapped around him from behind in the warm silence. Of all of them, she said that had been her favorite memory.

Krycek's fingers searched the soil like blind man's fingers, pulling the weeds they found. He thought of climbing the stairs to the roof patio, all rhythm and process but no thought, her finger tight around his belt loop, her hip snug against his. The stairs went on and on, higher than he'd remembered.

"I assume you've done some sort of gardening before?"

Carrie's voice made him jump.

He looked up, working to pull himself back to the present, and grunted an affirmative reply. "Summers where I grew up we had to grow what food we could. Short season, so it was always a race."

"What kind of crops?"

"Cabbage--lots of that. Beets, onions, cucumbers. Turnips and radishes."

"So weeding's second nature."

"Yeah." He paused. The sunset colors had overlaid Carrie with a rosy golden tint. "Thanks for taking me up there today. It helped."

"You're welcome." She smiled. "Thanks yourself, by the way."

"For?" He pulled the final weed and tossed it into the pile.

"I got a call from Tyler a few minutes ago. Guess I've always tried to keep the focus on him before, but I told him how much I miss him, and"--her smile broadened--"he said he wants to come home. So now I'll just have to negotiate something with Ron."

"Good for you. Just stick up for yourself. Don't let him push you around."

She nodded. "I'm going to stop at a nursery tomorrow and pick up some veggie starts."

Krycek glanced up at the shadow-abstract the oak tree had thrown against the wall. He took in a breath, held it several seconds and let it out again. "Mind if I add something to your list?"

 

 

*~*~*~*~*

_To: topaz@rift.net_   
_From: spooky@quick.net_   
_More details tomorrow when I'm coherent again, but here's the Cliff Notes version. We just got back from Elleryville. Be glad you weren't there. She was right about them not getting along. Well-meaning people, maybe, but the type who don't want to think about anything that doesn't fit into their ordered little universe, and unfortunately that included their niece. I guess the mindset hit pretty close to home. A chapter from the not-exactly-ideal story of my own childhood: When Samantha was taken, my parents both refused to talk about it, as if her disappearing was something I'd hallucinated. Didn't let me search for her or do anything at all to help find her. Drove me crazy, as you can probably guess._

_Came away with a little bit of background about Shirley, and a bunch of letters she'd written to her brother from Pasadena, with a return address on them. Should at least be a place to start._

_We went to their house in the valley and looked around, hoping to find some record of their time in Pasadena, but no dice. Not a single picture in an album, or anything else pre-Elleryville. Nice setting for a kid who's psychic, though--nature and quiet and nobody to make fun of her, or the static of a bunch of minds to drive her crazy. Had to be rough watching her mother go downhill that way, though. Hard to fathom having to be in a position like that. Looking back at it, she was pretty damn strong. I know I was a mess at that age._

_Nathan let me take her diary. I'm going to go through it in case there's anything in it that could help us._

_More tomorrow. Stay tuned._

_-M_

_P.S. It must have rained the day you were there, because I spotted a handful of barefoot prints dried into the mud outside. I'm pretty sure Nathan saw them, too, but he didn't say anything and I wasn't about to offer to enlighten him._


End file.
